Emotion Regulation Theory Research Articles

Child maltreatment and adult depressive symptoms: Roles of self-compassion and gratitude

Child maltreatment, including abuse (physical, emotional, and sexual) and neglect (physical and emotional), is positively associated with depressive symptoms in adulthood. However, most studies have been conducted within a psychopathological framework and focused on underlying dysfunctional processes (e.g., insecure attachment styles, maladaptive schemas, and negative attribution styles). Protective factors that affect the relationship between child maltreatment and adult depressive symptoms are underexplored. Guided by emotion regulation theory and the perspective of positive psychology, we examined the roles of self-compassion and gratitude as protective factors in the relationship between child maltreatment and adult depressive symptoms in a sample of 358 college students. Results showed that psychological maltreatment (emotional abuse and emotional neglect) was associated with adult depressive symptoms through decreased self-compassion. Neglect (emotional neglect and physical neglect) and sexual abuse were associated with adult depressive symptoms through decreased gratitude. There was no association between physical abuse and depressive symptoms through either self-compassion or gratitude. Our findings suggest that clinical practices focusing on self-compassion and gratitude might help prevent the development of adult depressive symptoms among clients with a history of maltreatment in childhood.

Distress tolerance and mindfulness mediate relations between depression and anxiety sensitivity with problematic smartphone use

Excessive, problematic smartphone use (PSU) has demonstrated relationships with depression and anxiety severity across studies. However, less is known about psychopathology-related variables that may mediate relations between depression/anxiety with PSU – especially variables involving emotional regulation processes. We recruited 261 college students for a repeated-measures web survey, administered self-report measures of depression, anxiety sensitivity, distress tolerance, mindfulness, smartphone use frequency, and PSU; one month later, participants completed these measures again. We tested a model where depression severity and anxiety sensitivity predicted distress tolerance and mindfulness, in turn predicting smartphone use frequency, and one-month PSU severity, adjusting for age and sex. Distress tolerance and mindfulness were inversely associated with levels of PSU. Distress tolerance mediated relations between anxiety sensitivity and levels of PSU. Mindfulness mediated relations between both depression and anxiety sensitivity with PSU severity. Results are discussed in the context of emotion regulation theory and compensatory internet use theory, with clinical implications for emotion regulation skills training and mindfulness in offsetting PSU.

A Novel Framework Based on the Improved Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Model to Understand the Impact of Job Characteristics on Job Burnout from the View of Emotion Regulation Theory.

It has been suggested that individual job characteristics have a significant impact on job burnout, and the process is subject to the regulation of demographic variables. However, the influence path of job characteristics on job burnout is still a "black box". On the basis of a systematic literature review by employing Pub Med, Science Direct, Web of Science, Google Scholar, CNKI and Scopus for required information with the several keywords "Job burnout", "Emotion regulation", "Personality traits", and "Psychological stress", in this study, an improved mine rescue workers-oriented job demands-resources (JD-R) model was put forward. Then, a novel analysis framework, to explore the impact of job characteristics on job burnout from the view of emotion regulation theory, was proposed combining the personality trait theory. This study argues that job burnout is influenced by job demands through expressive suppression and by job resources through cognitive reappraisal respectively. Further more, job demands and job resources have the opposite effects on job burnout through the "loss-path" caused by job pressure and the "gain-path" arised from job motivation, respectively. Extrovert personality traits can affect the way the individual processes the information of work environment and then how individual further adopts emotion regulation strategies, finally resulting in indirectly affecting the influence path of mine rescue workers' job characteristics on job burnout. This present study can help managers to realize the importance of employees' psychological stress and job burnout problems. The obtained conclusions provide significant decision-making references for managers in intervening job burnout, managing emotional stress and mental health of employees.

State and Trait Anger Predicting Creative Process Engagement—The Role of Emotion Regulation

AbstractDrawing on the specific emotion approach, and based on the emotional regulation theory and cognitive and activation perspectives on emotions, this study examined the differentiated impact of state and trait anger on creative process engagement (CPE) and the moderating influences of emotion reappraisal and suppression. Data were obtained from daily surveys (N = 422) of 98 employees from three consultancy companies. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis revealed that trait anger has a stronger impact on CPE than state anger does. Furthermore, the relationship between state anger and CPE is stronger when emotion reappraisal is lower, rather than higher, and the relationship between trait anger and CPE is also stronger when emotion suppression is lower, rather than higher.

Motivating service employee creativity: regulatory focus and emotional labour

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of the roles that service employees’ responses to high job demands play in service innovation, by examining the effects that service employees’ motivational orientation in self-regulation (regulatory focus) and their emotional labour strategy have on their creativity.Design/methodology/approachBy integrating regulatory focus theory and emotion regulation theory, the authors developed a theoretical model to propose the links between promotion and prevention regulatory foci, different emotional labour strategies and frontline employee creativity. The research hypotheses were tested using hierarchical linear model based on data collected from 304 frontline employees and 72 supervisors in 51 restaurants.FindingsThe results showed that promotion focus was positively related to frontline employee creativity while prevention focus was negatively related to it. In addition, both emotional labour strategies (deep acting and surface acting) mediated the effect of promotion focus on frontline employee creativity. Surface acting mediated the effect of prevention focus on frontline employee creativity.Originality/valueThis is the first research conducted to explain, from a self-regulatory perspective, the influence that is exerted on service employees’ service innovation by their responses to high job demands. The findings identify the effects that service employees’ promotion focus or prevention focus in self-regulation have on their creativity, and the data unravel the role of emotional labour strategy as the mediating mechanism that explains the influence of regulatory focus on service employee creativity. On the basis of the findings, managerial directions are offered with regard to managing service employees’ regulatory focus and emotional labour, with a view to enhancing the creativity and innovation within a service organisation.

Worry amplifies theory-of-mind reasoning for negatively valenced social stimuli in generalized anxiety disorder

BackgroundTheory-of-mind (ToM) is the ability to accurately infer others’ thoughts and feelings. In generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), cognitive and emotion regulation theories allude to the plausibility that ToM is conditional on the degree of individuals’ state worry, a hallmark symptom. GAD and state worry may interact to predict ToM constructs. However, no experiments have directly tested such interactional hypotheses, and used ToM as a framework to advance understanding of social cognition in GAD. This study therefore aimed to address this gap. Methods171 participants (69 GAD, 102 Controls) were randomly assigned to either a Worry or Relaxation induction and completed well-validated ToM decoding (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test) and reasoning (Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition) tasks. ResultsGAD status significantly interacted with state worry to predict accuracy of overall reasoning, cognitive-reasoning, positive-reasoning, and negative-reasoning ToM. Worry, as opposed to relaxation, led sufferers of GAD to display more accurate overall reasoning and cognitive-reasoning ToM than controls, especially for negative signals. Participants with GAD who worried, but not relaxed, were also significantly better than the norm at interpreting negative signals. These findings remained after controlling for gender, executive function, social anxiety, and depressive symptoms. For other ToM abilities, mean scores of persons with and without GAD who either worried or relaxed were normative. LimitationsThe ToM reasoning measure lacked self-reference, and these preliminary findings warrant replication. ConclusionsTheoretical implications, such as the state worry-contingent nature of ToM in GAD, and clinical implications are discussed.

Understanding reappraisal as a multicomponent process: The psychological health benefits of attempting to use reappraisal depend on reappraisal success.

When is reappraisal-reframing a situation's meaning to alter its emotional impact-associated with psychological health? To answer this question, we should consider that reappraisal is a multicomponent process that includes, first, deciding to attempt to use reappraisal and, second, implementing reappraisal with varying degrees of success. Although theories of emotion regulation suggest that both attempting reappraisal more frequently and implementing reappraisal more successfully are necessary to achieve greater psychological health, no research has directly tested this assumption. We propose that daily diaries are particularly well suited to assess these 2 components because diaries can capture repeated attempts and success in daily life and with relative precision. In a sample of community adults (N = 219), we found that among participants experiencing elevated life stress (but not among those experiencing lower life stress), attempting reappraisal more frequently was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for those who used reappraisal more successfully, but was associated with somewhat more depressive symptoms for those who used reappraisal less successfully. These findings suggest that attempting reappraisal is associated with benefits only when individuals can implement it successfully. Thus, to fully understand the health implications of emotion regulation, we must consider it as a multicomponent process. (PsycINFO Database Record

An Occupational Portrait of Emotional Labor Requirements and Their Health Consequences for Workers

Scholarship has revealed inconsistent evidence on the issue of whether emotional labor represents an occupational health risk. Drawing from emotion regulation theory, the conservation of resources model and the interactive service work literature, we examine the association between occupational emotional labor requirements and worker well-being. Analyses of a national sample of American workers merged with occupational information from the O*NET database reveal no evidence that these requirements are associated with psychological distress or high blood pressure; in contrast, emotional labor requirements are associated with a reduced likelihood of self-rated poor health. Consistent with the conservation of resources model, however, we find health penalties for individuals with emotional labor requirements in resource-deprived work contexts. Our findings suggest that for individuals with limited job autonomy and little access to civil interpersonal relationships with coworkers, emotional labor requirements ...

Estrategias cognitivas de control, evitación y regulación emocional: el papel diferencial en pensamientos repetitivos negativos e intrusivos

In this research, we present the relationships of a broad range of cognitive and emotional avoidance strategies, such as reappraisal, punishment, and social control with some repetitive negative thoughts such as trait worry, brooding, reflection, and other intrusive thoughts such as those associated with obsessions and compulsions and post-traumatic stress. The participants were 267 individuals from the general population, of whom 62.6% were women and 37.4% men. The results indicate that the most transdiagnostic strategies for repetitive negative and intrusive thoughts are worrying, avoidance of threatening stimuli, rumination, and catastrophism. Reappraisal and focusing on planning are predictors of reflection, while focusing on planning is also common to intrusive thoughts. Results are discussed from the theories of cognitive avoidance and emotion regulation and their possible integration into the experiential avoidance disorder of the relational frame theory.

\u201cI\u2019d been like freaking out the whole night\u201d: exploring emotion regulation based on junior doctors\u2019 narratives

The importance of emotions within medical practice is well documented. Research suggests that how clinicians deal with negative emotions can affect clinical decision-making, health service delivery, clinician well-being, attentiveness to patient care and patient satisfaction. Previous research has identified the transition from student to junior doctor (intern) as a particularly challenging time. While many studies have highlighted the presence of emotions during this transition, how junior doctors manage emotions has rarely been considered. We conducted a secondary analysis of narrative data in which 34 junior doctors, within a few months of transitioning into practice, talked about situations for which they felt prepared or unprepared for practice (preparedness narratives) through audio diaries and interviews. We examined these data deductively (using Gross’ theory of emotion regulation: ER) and inductively to answer the following research questions: (RQ1) what ER strategies do junior doctors describe in their preparedness narratives? and (RQ2) at what point in the clinical situation are these strategies narrated? We identified 406 personal incident narratives: 243 (60%) contained negative emotion, with 86 (21%) also containing ER. Overall, we identified 137 ER strategies, occurring prior to (n = 29, 21%), during (n = 74, 54%) and after (n = 34, 25%) the situation. Although Gross’ theory captured many of the ER strategies used by junior doctors, we identify further ways in which this model can be adapted to fully capture the range of ER strategies participants employed. Further, from our analysis, we believe that raising medical students’ awareness of how they can handle stressful situations might help smooth the transition to becoming a doctor and be important for later practice.

The relation between rumination and temporal features of emotion intensity

ABSTRACT Intensity profiles of emotional experience over time have been found to differ primarily in explosiveness (i.e. whether the profile has a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e. whether intensity increases over time vs. goes back to baseline). However, the determinants of these temporal features remain poorly understood. In two studies, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies are predictive of the degree of explosiveness and accumulation of negative emotional episodes. Participants were asked to draw profiles reflecting changes in the intensity of emotions elicited either by negative social feedback in the lab (Study 1) or by negative events in daily life (Study 2). In addition, trait (Study 1 & 2), and state (Study 2) usage of a set of emotion regulation strategies was assessed. Multilevel analyses revealed that trait rumination (especially the brooding component) was positively associated with emotion accumulation (Study 1 & 2). State rumination was also positively associated with emotion accumulation and, to a lesser extent, with emotion explosiveness (Study 2). These results provide support for emotion regulation theories, which hypothesise that rumination is a central mechanism underlying the maintenance of negative emotions.

Theory of mind, emotional and social functioning, and motor severity in children and adolescents with dystonic cerebral palsy

This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate whether children and adolescents with dystonic cerebral palsy (CP) present with emotional and social difficulties along side motor limitations. Twenty-two verbal and nonverbal children and adolescents with dystonic CP were compared with a normative sample of twenty children and adolescents on measures of theory of mind (ToM), emotion regulation (ER), and social difficulties (SD). Higher social and emotional difficulties were found in the dystonic CP group compared to the control group. Nonverbal participants with dystonic CP were found to present with greater social impairment and lower ToM ability than their verbal counterparts. Emotional regulation and hyperactivity and attentional difficulties (HAD) significantly predicted ToM ability and social difficulties. Lower Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) level and IQ also contributed to differences in ToM ability. Findings support the need for greater attention to the emotional health and social development of children/adolescents with dystonic CP, along with assessments of motor difficulties in the planning and implementation of interventions and individual care plans. Further research is needed to explore links between motor disorder and mental state understanding in this clinical group.

Emotionally focused individual therapy: An attachment-based experiential/systemic perspective

ABSTRACTAttachment theory as a theory of adult love and emotion regulation can provide a humanistic paradigm for therapeutic change that is relevant to a broad range of presenting problems. I advocate emotionally focused individual therapy, an attachment-based experiential/systemic integration that targets concerns common across various models of individual psychotherapy: creating secure attachment, resolving negative interpersonal and intrapsychic interactive patterns, and developing effective emotion regulation strategies. I suggest that attachment theory sets the stage from which to consider individual therapy as a process of love (developing secure connections) between therapist and client, between client and past and present relationships, and within the client’s internal processes. I present principles of attachment, discuss how these principles can fruitfully shape the therapeutic relationship, define the destination for change, offer guidance for working with emotion and shape interventions and change processes. The change processes which I present and illustrate with a case example are as follows: (1) identifying patterns of emotion regulation and deepening the underlying emotion and (2) creating corrective emotional experiences that can transform these patterns into secure bonds interpersonally and intrapsychically.

Disadvantaged youth report less negative emotion to minor stressors when with peers

Previous Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies demonstrate that adolescents’ daily emotional states are heavily influenced by their immediate social context. However, despite adolescence being a risk period for exposure to daily stressors, research has yet to examine the influence of peers on adolescents’ emotional responses to stressors encountered in their daily life. Adolescents (N = 108) from a low-SES school completed ESM reports of their social context, minor stressors and emotions, 5 times a day for 7 days. Based on previous findings that the peer context is experienced as positive and rewarding, we expected being with peers would be associated with lower post-stress negative emotions and higher happiness, compared to being with family or alone. As expected, being with peers after a stressor was associated with lower sadness, worry and jealousy compared to being alone, and lower sadness compared to being with family. Gender differences emerged for the influence of peers on sadness, worry, jealousy and happiness. These findings highlight the salient influence of peers on adolescents’ emotional reactivity to stressors as they occur in their natural environment. Findings are discussed in reference to peers as important emotion socialization agents during adolescence and in terms of theories of coping and emotion regulation.

“We just pretended as if everything was good”: Communication about alcohol in families of nonalcoholic and alcoholic parents

ABSTRACTFamily communication is a strong predictor of the attitudes and behaviors children and adolescents have toward alcohol. This study explored perspectives of family communication about the topic of alcohol in focus groups consisting of adult children of alcoholics and adult children of nonalcoholics. The study utilized Koerner and Fitzpatrick’s (2002) family communication patterns theory and Gottman’s (2001) emotion regulation theory to guide research and focus group questions. A group of trained coders conducted an analysis of transcripts from four focus groups—two were comprised of self-proclaimed adult children of alcoholics and two consisted solely of adult children of nonalcoholic parents. Based on responses from both groups, five themes emerged: Experiences of Open Communication, Family Decision Making, Communication about Alcohol, Ability to Express Emotion, and Feelings Toward the Alcoholic. Results suggest that adult children of alcoholics have a very different experience when it comes to family communication, communication about the topic of alcohol, and the ability to express emotion. These findings provide insight to the communication dynamics in families of alcoholics and suggest avenues for future research.

Teachers’ emotions and emotion management: integrating emotion regulation theory with emotional labor research

While the similarities between emotion regulation (Gross in J Personal Soc Psychol 74:224–237, 1998a) and emotional labor (Hochschild in The managed heart: commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983) have been theoretically discussed, empirical research on their relation is lacking. We examined the relations between the two constructs as well as their relations with teachers’ discrete emotions in a sample of 189 secondary school teachers. The results showed that reappraisal correlated positively with deep acting, whereas suppression correlated positively with surface acting. The findings further suggest that reappraisal and deep acting are linked to experiencing positive emotions, whereas suppression and surface acting are linked to experiencing negative emotions. However, there also were some differences in how emotion regulation and emotional labor were related to teachers’ discrete emotional experiences. Specifically, reappraisal and deep acting strategies were positively related to enjoyment; in addition, deep acting was negatively related to negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, and frustration. By contrast, suppression and surface acting strategies were positively associated with negative emotions (i.e., suppression with anxiety; surface acting with anxiety, anger, and frustration), and surface acting was negatively associated with the positive emotion enjoyment. Implications for integrating research on teachers’ emotion regulation and emotional labor are discussed.

Models of Cognitive Ability and Emotion Can Better Inform Contemporary Emotional Intelligence Frameworks

Emotional intelligence (EI) stands at the nexus between intelligence and emotion disciplines, and we outline how EI research might be better integrated within both theoretical frameworks. From the former discipline, empirical research focused upon whether EI is an intelligence and what type of intelligence it constitutes. It is clear that ability-based tests of EI form a group factor of cognitive abilities that may be integrated into the Cattell–Horn–Carroll framework; less clear is the lower order factor structure of EI. From the latter discipline, research linking EI with theoretical frameworks from emotion research remain relatively sparse. Emotion regulation and appraisal theory may be key to explain how EI may reflect different processes. We propose a research agenda to advance the EI study.

Emotion regulation changes the duration of the BOLD response to emotional stimuli.

Emotion regulation theories posit that strategies like reappraisal should impact both the intensity and duration of emotional responses. However, research on reappraisal to date has examined almost exclusively its effect on the intensity of responses while failing to examine its effect on the duration of responses. To address this, we used inverse logit functions to estimate the height and duration of hemodynamic responses to negative pictures when individuals with recent life stress were instructed to use reappraisal either to decrease their negative emotion or to increase their positive emotion (relative to unregulated viewing of negative pictures). Several emotion-generative regions such as the amygdala, thalamus and midbrain exhibited decreases in duration of activation, even when controlling for differences in height of activation. In addition, whereas the amygdala exhibited both decreased activation height and duration when participants reappraised to decrease their negative emotion, it only exhibited decreased duration when participants reappraised to increase their positive emotion. These results indicate that emotion regulation alters the temporal dynamics of emotional responding and that models of reappraisal should accommodate whether reappraisal influences the height of activation, duration of activation or both, which may change based on the goal of the reappraisal strategy being used.

The benefits of job demands for employees low in self-esteem and high in trait procrastination

We integrate self-efficacy theories of motivation and distraction theories of emotion regulation to propose that job demands boost the self-evaluation and performance of employees characterized by low self-esteem and high trait procrastination. We reason that job demands minimize these individuals’ negative self-directed affect. We find support for these predictions in three experiments that manipulated the physical (Study 1) and cognitive (Studies 2 & 3) demands of a task. These task demands boosted the self-evaluation (Studies 1 & 2) and performance (Study 3) of participants high in trait procrastination and participants’ low in self-esteem, but exerted no or a negative effect on these outcomes for participants low in trait procrastination or high in self-esteem. Moreover, whereas trait procrastination and low self-esteem were associated with greater negative self-evaluation and lower performance in low job demand contexts, they showed no relationship with these negative outcomes in high job demand cont...

A Dual-pathway Model of Supervisor-directed Surface and Deep Acting

Building on social functional theories of emotion regulation, this study examined how employees’ emotional labor strategies when interacting with their supervisor can influence supervisors’ affecti...