Emotion Regulation Strategy Usage Research Articles

The Relationship Between Interoceptive Awareness, Emotion Regulation and Clinical Symptoms Severity of Depression, Anxiety and Somatization.

The primary objective of this study was to examine the associations among emotion regulation strategies, interoceptive awareness, and psychological distress measures-namely, depression, anxiety, and somatization. Additionally, we aimed to explore the predictive power of various facets of interoceptive awareness in determining the severity of symptoms for each mental disorder. A cohort of 130 outpatients diagnosed with depression/anxiety disorder were recruited, and 20 subjects exhibiting incomplete responses were excluded from the dataset, leading to a final sample size of 110 outpatients. The clinical symptoms were measured by Patient Health Questionnaire-9, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Form Y, and Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, and the usage of emotion-regulation strategies and interoceptive awareness was assessed with Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA), respectively. A hierarchical regression analysis was performed to examine whether emotion-regulation strategies and interoceptive awareness explain the statistically significant variance in each of the symptoms. In the depression model, cognitive reappraisal, accept, and attention regulation showed significant associations, while in the anxiety model, cognitive reappraisal, attention regulation, trust, and notice emerged as significant factors. Lastly, cognitive reappraisal and attention regulation were found to be significant contributors to the final model for somatization. The inclusion of MAIA subscales improved the predictive ability of the regression model, highlighting the independent association between interoceptive awareness-particularly attention regulation-and clinical symptoms of anxiety and depression. Additionally, the study underscores the relevance of considering the specific pathological context when implementing interventions, as evidenced by the positive associations between the accept subscale and depression and between the notice subscale and anxiety, respectively.

Perceived stress moderates emotion regulation success in real-world contexts: an ecologically-valid multilevel investigation

ABSTRACT Background Emotion regulation plays a crucial role in well-being in everyday life. Effective emotion regulation depends upon adaptively matching a given strategy to a given situation. Recent research has begun to explore these interactions in the context of daily reports of perceived stress, affect, and emotion regulation strategy usage. To further understand these differences in strategy efficacy in an ecologically valid context, we examined responses to real world stressors in a young adult sample. Methods We surveyed a range of emotion regulation strategies, including two forms of cognitive reappraisal (i.e., reinterpretation, which involves cognitively reframing one’s emotional responses, and psychological distancing, which involves adopting an objective, impartial perspective). Participants reported strategy usage, momentary perceived stress, and affect in response to multiple ecological momentary assessments over a period of 7 days. Results Analyses of links between strategy usage and affect revealed that rumination was significantly negatively associated with more positive affect ratings. Further, a significant interaction between momentary perceived stress and reinterpretation usage was observed on affect, such that reinterpretation was more adaptive during situations perceived as less stressful. Conclusion These results provide further insight into the importance of situational context in determining the effectiveness of particular emotion regulation strategies.

The effect of picture book reading on young children's use of an emotion regulation strategy.

Picture book reading is an enjoyable everyday activity for many young children with well-known benefits for language development. The present study investigated whether picture book reading can support young children's social-emotional development by providing a learning opportunity for the usage of emotion regulation strategies. Three-year-old children participated in two waiting situations designed to elicit negative affect. Between these waiting situations they read a picture book. In two experimental conditions, the book depicted how a protagonist (same-aged peer or young adult, respectively) waited for a desired object and distracted herself with toys while waiting. Children in an additional control condition read a picture book that was unrelated to waiting. Use of distraction did not differ between conditions. Parents often read picture book interactively with their children. Therefore, in an additional condition (Exp. 2), the experimenter read the picture book featuring the same-aged peer protagonist in an interactive way intended to facilitate transfer. Apart from the reading style, the design was identical to experiment 1. Experiment 2 intended to test whether changes in reading style lead to differences in three-year old children's social-emotional learning from picture books. When controlling for the children's picture book experience, children in the experimental conditions exhibited an increase in distraction in contrast to children in the control condition. In sum, results suggest that picture book reading could be an ecologically valid and versatile method for supporting 3-year-old children in their use of an age-appropriate adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as distraction.

Emotion Regulation Strategies and Beliefs About Emotions Predict Psychosocial Outcomes in Response to Multiple Stressors.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00187-0.

Anger profiles among individuals seeking treatment for maladaptive anger: Associations with emotion regulation.

Individuals who experience problems with anger represent a heterogeneous group. Identifying clinically relevant subtypes of anger may advance treatment research. In the current study, latent profile analysis (LPA) was conducted to explore if distinct subtypes of anger could be identified within a sample of individuals seeking treatment for maladaptive anger (N = 538; 55.4% females; mean age = 39.78, SD = 12.28). Furthermore, the utility of the empirical classification was examined based on differences in usage of emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, mindful emotion awareness and relaxation) across subtypes. Four anger profiles were identified in the best-fitted LPA model: Low Anger (n = 153, 28.4%), Anger In (n = 91, 16.9%), Moderate Anger (n = 193, 35.9%) and High Anger (n = 101, 35.5%). Results from the multinominal regression revealed that the use of emotion regulation differed across all profiles. Participants from the High Anger and Anger In profiles exhibited distinct patterns of dysfunctional emotion regulation. The results add to the increasing amount of evidence demonstrating a link between emotion regulation strategies and maladaptive anger. Clinical implications on how to tailor treatments for individuals with maladaptive anger are discussed.

Benefits of Affective Pedagogical Agents in Multimedia Instruction.

The goal of the present study is to explore whether the affective states (happy or neutral) of a pedagogical agent (PA) in an online multimedia lesson yields different learning processes and outcomes, and whether the effects of affective PAs depend on the learners’ emotion regulation strategies and their prior knowledge. In three experiments, undergraduates were asked to view a narrated animation about synaptic transmission that included either a happy PA (smiling expression and enthusiastic voice) or a neutral PA (neutral expression and calm voice) and subsequently took emotions, motivation, cognitive outcomes tests. Across three experiments, the happy PA group reported more positive emotions (ds = 0.70, 0.46, and 0.60) and higher level of motivation (ds = 0.76, 0.49, and 0.51) than the neutral PA group. Moreover, the happy PA prompted higher germane load (d = 0.41) than a neutral PA in Experiment 3. However, adding a happy PA to the screen did not improve learning performance. In addition, in Experiment 2, learners’ usage of emotion regulation strategies moderated the effectiveness of affective PA on positive emotions in learners. Specifically, happy PAs increased the positive emotions of students who used expressive suppression strategy (d = 0.99) but not those who used cognitive reappraisal strategy (d = 0.13). In Experiment 3, the effectiveness of affective PAs was not moderated by learners’ prior knowledge. Results support the cognitive affective theory of learning with media (CATLM) that students are happier and more motivated when they learn from happy PAs than from neutral PAs.

Emotion regulation strategy usage explains links between institutional caregiving and elevated internalizing symptoms.

Early adversity, including institutional orphanage care, is associated with the development of internalizing disorders. Previous research suggests that institutionalization can disrupt emotion regulation processes, which contribute to internalizing symptoms. However, no prior work has investigated how early orphanage care shapes emotion regulation strategy usage (e.g., cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression) and whether the said strategy usage contributes to internalizing symptoms. This study probed emotion regulation strategy usage and internalizing symptoms in a sample of 36 previously institutionalized and 58 comparison youth. As hypothesized, previously institutionalized youth exhibited higher rates of internalizing symptoms than comparison youth, and more frequent use of suppression partially accounted for the relationship between early institutional care and elevated internalizing symptoms. Contrary to our initial hypotheses, reappraisal use did not buffer previously institutionalized or comparison youth against internalizing symptoms. Our findings highlight the potential utility of targeting emotion regulation strategy usage in adversity-exposed youth in future intervention work.

Linking psychophysiological adaptation, emotion regulation, and subjective stress to the occurrence of paranoia in daily life

As stress is relevant to the formation of paranoia, maladaptive behavioral and physiological stress regulation is discussed as a crucial indicator of vulnerability. This is supported by research linking psychosis to the tendency to make less use of functional and more use of dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies (ER) and with a lower vagally-mediated heart rate variability (HRV). However, it remains unclear whether ER serves as a mediator between resting-state HRV on the one hand and subjective stress levels and paranoia on the other and whether this is specific to paranoia as compared to depression. We used an experience sampling method during seven days to repeatedly assess the experience of stress, usage of ER strategies, paranoia und depression (9/day) in a sample with subclinical positive symptoms (N = 32). Resting-state HRV was measured during a 5min interval in the laboratory. Data was analyzed by multi-level models. Higher resting-state HRV was predictive of lower stress-levels and of using more functional ER strategies (reappraisal, acceptance) in daily life, but did not predict the use of dysfunctional strategies (rumination, suppression) or paranoia. The association between resting-state HRV and stress was mediated by the usage of functional ER. Less functional and more dysfunctional ER were linked to higher levels of stress, paranoia and depression. Our study highlights that deficits in ER represent a link between psychophysiological and phenomenological aspects of paranoia but also of depression. This encourages to further investigate transdiagnostic prevention and therapy programs aiming to improve ER and to increase HRV.

Multiple Negative Emotions During Learning With Digital Learning Environments - Evidence on Their Detrimental Effect on Learning From Two Methodological Approaches.

Emotions are a core factor of learning. Studies have shown that multiple emotions are co-experienced during learning and have a significant impact on learning outcomes. The present study investigated the importance of multiple, co-occurring emotions during learning about human biology with MetaTutor, a hypermedia-based tutoring system. Person-centered as well as variable-centered approaches of cluster analyses were used to identify emotion clusters. The person-centered clustering analyses indicated three emotion profiles: a positive, negative and neutral profile. Students with a negative profile learned less than those with other profiles and also reported less usage of emotion regulation strategies. Emotion patterns identified through spectral co-clustering confirmed these results. Throughout the learning activity, emotions built a stable correlational structure of a positive, a negative, a neutral and a boredom emotion pattern. Positive emotion pattern scores before the learning activity and negative emotion pattern scores during the learning activity predicted learning, but not consistently. These results reveal the importance of negative emotions during learning with MetaTutor. Potential moderating factors and implications for the design and development of educational interventions that target emotions and emotion regulation with digital learning environments are discussed.

"Resting Frontal EEG Asymmetry and Emotion Regulation in Older Adults: The Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Study," Correction to Kelley and Hughes (2019).

Reports an error in "Resting frontal EEG asymmetry and emotion regulation in older adults: The midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study" by Nicholas J. Kelley and Matthew L. Hughes (Psychology and Aging, 2019[May], Vol 34[3], 341-347). The text "We also did observe or predict" should read "We also did not observe, nor did we predict" in the following sentence of the fourth paragraph of the Discussion section: "We also did observe or predict, age-related differences in FAA among participants who either reported low usage of both emotion regulation strategies or high usage of both strategies." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2019-14253-001.) Lateralized asymmetrical activity in the alpha frequency band over the frontal cortex (i.e., frontal alpha asymmetry [FAA]) is robustly related to motivation and emotion. For example, left FAA is related to approach-motivation, positive emotions, and successful emotion regulation whereas right FAA is associated with avoidance-motivation, negative emotions, and poor emotion regulation. This work has been conducted primarily in undergraduates and young adults despite the important of emotion regulation to healthy aging. The current study examined age-related differences in the relationships between emotion regulation strategy usage and resting frontal EEG asymmetry in a sample of middle-aged to older adults. We found that aging was associated with greater right FAA among both those who habitually used maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (i.e., high suppression/low reappraisal) and those who habitually used adaptive emotion regulation strategies (i.e., low suppression/high reappraisal). However, a slopes difference test revealed that aging was more strongly associated with right FAA among those who habitually used maladaptive (vs. adaptive) emotion regulation strategies. These results suggest that the negative consequences of habitually using maladaptive emotion regulation strategies may be more harmful in older adults. This may explain why some researchers have observed that older adults tend to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies less often. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Resting frontal EEG asymmetry and emotion regulation in older adults: The midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study.

Lateralized asymmetrical activity in the alpha frequency band over the frontal cortex (i.e., frontal alpha asymmetry [FAA]) is robustly related to motivation and emotion. For example, left FAA is related to approach-motivation, positive emotions, and successful emotion regulation whereas right FAA is associated with avoidance-motivation, negative emotions, and poor emotion regulation. This work has been conducted primarily in undergraduates and young adults despite the important of emotion regulation to healthy aging. The current study examined age-related differences in the relationships between emotion regulation strategy usage and resting frontal EEG asymmetry in a sample of middle-aged to older adults. We found that aging was associated with greater right FAA among both those who habitually used maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (i.e., high suppression/low reappraisal) and those who habitually used adaptive emotion regulation strategies (i.e., low suppression/high reappraisal). However, a slopes difference test revealed that aging was more strongly associated with right FAA among those who habitually used maladaptive (vs. adaptive) emotion regulation strategies. These results suggest that the negative consequences of habitually using maladaptive emotion regulation strategies may be more harmful in older adults. This may explain why some researchers have observed that older adults tend to use maladaptive emotion regulation strategies less often. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion Regulation Predicts Everyday Emotion Experience and Social Function in Schizophrenia.

While recent evidence has pointed to disturbances in emotion regulation strategy use in schizophrenia, few studies have examined how these regulation strategies relate to emotionality and social behavior in daily life. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), we investigated the relationship between emotion regulation, emotional experience and social interaction in the daily lives of individuals with schizophrenia. Participants (N=30) used mobile phones to complete online questionnaires reporting their daily emotional experience and social interaction. Participants also completed self-report measures of habitual emotion regulation. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that self-reported use of cognitive reappraisal and savoring of emotional experiences were related to greater positive emotion in daily life. In contrast, self-reported suppression was related to greater negative emotion, reduced positive emotion and reduced social interaction in daily life. These findings suggest that individual differences in habitual emotion regulation strategy usage have important relationships to every day emotional and social experiences in schizophrenia.

The temporal deployment of emotion regulation strategies during negative emotional episodes.

Time is given a central place in theoretical models of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), but key questions regarding the role of time remain unanswered. We investigated 2 such unanswered questions. First, we explored when different emotion regulation strategies were used within the course of an emotional episode in daily life. Second, we investigated the association between the temporal deployment of strategies and negative emotional experience. We conducted a daily diary study in which participants (N = 74) drew an intensity profile depicting the temporal unfolding of their negative emotional experience across daily events (N = 480), and mapped their usage of emotion regulation strategies onto this intensity profile. Strategies varied in their temporal deployment, with suppression and rumination occurring more at the beginning of the episode, and reappraisal and distraction occurring more toward the end of the episode. Strategies also varied in their association with negative emotion: rumination was positively associated with negative emotion, and reappraisal and distraction were negatively associated with negative emotion. Finally, both rumination and reappraisal interacted with time to predict negative emotional experience. Rumination was more strongly positively associated with negative emotions at the end of the episode than the beginning, but reappraisal was more strongly negatively associated with negative emotion at the beginning of the episode than the end. These findings highlight the importance of accounting for timing in the study of emotion regulation, as well as the necessity of studying these temporal processes in daily life. (PsycINFO Database Record

Psychophysiological Reactivity, Interoception and Emotion Regulation in Patients with Agoraphobia During Virtual Reality Anxiety Induction

The symptoms experienced by patients with agoraphobia are often attributed to excessive autonomic arousal, but recent theories postulate blunted rather than enhanced autonomic reactivity. Cognitive models explain this contrast by distorted interoception, possibly linked to dysfunctional emotion regulation under stress. In the current study, physiological measures were compared directly to their subjective perception in patients with agoraphobia (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 27) in a virtual reality stressor. Blunted reactivity was confirmed for heart rate and parasympathetic influences on heart rate variability, but measures of sympathetic activation did not differ between groups. As expected, patients showed exaggerated perception of their physiological response. Usage of emotion regulation strategies during the stressor did not differ between groups, but patients reported strong difficulties in perception of and coping with emotions in a trait measure. Our findings suggest that distorted perception of physiological and emotional processes is central to agoraphobia.