Regulating Emotion Flashcards
emotion regulation consists of
3 components explained
Definition doesn’t include??
= it consists of the extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional reactions, especially their intense and temporal features, to accomplish ones own goal (Thompson, 1994)
- Extrinsic and intrinsic
refers to that people can regulate their own emotions (intrapersonal ER) but others also help them to regulate their emotions (interpersonal ER)
Monitoring, evaluating and modifying emotional reactions refers to how people assess how their feeling and will make changes to their emoitons in relation to the situation they’re in
–> people can choose to maintain their affective state (Parkinson & Totterdell, 1999) (can choose how long to maintain this for)
Intensive & temporal features highlights the aspects of emotion reactions that can be altered:
- intensity of the emotion experienced
- temporal features: when the emotion is experienced, how long its experienced for (duration)
- -> also influence type of emotion and how its expressed
The definition does NOT mention that emotion can be:
1) explicit = effortful
2) implicit = automatic
(Gyuiak, Gross & Etkin, 2011)
why do people regulate emotions?
when looking at the causes of human dysfunction and suffering , its been found emotions lead us to do things that cause suffering to ourselves and those around us, whether through impulsive aggressive action, hasty business decsions or deceitful sexual liasons (Gross, 1998)
- emotions not benefitting us? = might want to change them
1) HEDONIC REASONS (Gross, 1998)
2) INSTRUMENTAL REASONS
Why do people regulate emotions? Hedonic reasons (Gross, 1998)
= people want to maximise immediate pleasures
–> feel pleasant emotions and avoid negative ones
- decrease emotional responses that are:
1) inappropriate
2) a result of an overly simplistic appraisal of the situation
3) redundant and interfere with other behaviour - increase emotional responses
1) that are lacking
2) when you want to change the emotion you want to feel in a situation
why do people regulate emotions?
Instrumental reasons
=people may want to experience emotions that are USEFUL and avoid unhelpful ones
- people want to feel unpleasant emotions, such as anger or fear, when these emotions promote the attainment of their long term goals (Tamir, 2009)
- people possess powerful epistemic and pragmatic motivational concerns that may be more important, or more fundamental to action, than hedonistic concerns
(Clore & Robinson, 2000)
what motivates people to change their emotions?
Tamir, Mitchell & Gross(2008)
ps read scenarios of 2 games:
1) confrontational - have to kill enemy
2) non-confrontational - have to serve customers
- expressed preference for what they would do before the game
- then, listened to exciting/ neutral/ angry music
- recall past event that made them excited/ neutral/ angry
found:
- p’s preferred anger-inducing activities when anticipating a confrontational, but not non-confrontational game
= suggests people don’t always want to feel good sometimes they want to feel bas to achieve their own goals
Lane et al (2012)
- examined runners beliefs about the emotions associated with ideal performance and the regulatory strategies they used
found: if you believe anger/anxiety helps performance = increase these unpleasant emotions
= Tamirs findings can be applied outside of labs to help achieve goals
how do people regulate emotions?
- study?
- 2 categories found
Totterdell & Parkinson (1999)
- 64 undergrads explained their most recent strategy used to improve their feelings when experiencing an unpleasant emotion or mood
12 office workers
7 volunteers
found: 162 strategies identified and categorised into:
1) behavioural strategies
2) cognitive strategies
(behavioural or cognitive dependent on how strategies implemented)`
How do people regulate emotions?
Distraction
- focuses attention away from situation altogether or focuses on different aspects of situation (external)
- may also involve changing internal focus, such as invoking thoughts/ memories that are inconsistent with emotional state (Gross,2014)
How do people regulate emotions?
Reappraisal
-always possible?
-what can you reappraise? (3)
modifying how we appraise the situation to alter its emotional significance, either by changing how we think about the situation or our capacity to manage the demands it poses(Gross, 2014)
always possible?
- Davis et al (1998) - 73% people who had recently lost a spouse/ parent / child / sibling could find something positive in the experience (Eg. strengthening bonds)
What can you reappraise?
- the emotional stimulus
came up with a less negative representation off the picture content (Hajcak & Nieuwenhuis, 2006)
- the situation
increase their sense of objective distance, viewing pictured events from a detatched 3rd person perspective (Oschner et al, 2004)
- the emotional experience
take note of your thoughts and feelings without judging them (Kuehner, Hutziger & Liebsch, 2009)
How do people regulate their emotion?
suppression
when one tries to inhibit ongoing negative or positive emotion-expressive behaviour (Gross, 2014)
- suppression does decrease the observable/ expressive emotion, but it rarely changes the actual negative emotion experience, but it may decrease positive emotion (Pena-sarrionandia, Mikolajcak & Gross, 2015)
- -> suppression of positive emotion can accurately change emotion
Implementation of the strategies
-Parkinson and Totterdell (1999)
implementation!
affect regulation strategies:
1) behavioural = actions that help you feel better
2) cognitive = positive thoughts make you feel better
How the strategies are implemented?
- behavioural: diversion (distraction) // share feelings (social support)
- cognitive: rejection (disengage) // accommodation (relax)
When the strategies are implemented, we can change:
1) situation
2) attention
3) appraisal
4) response
how?
1) situation:
- situation selection: can avoid situation to prevent negative emotion
- situation modification : changing a particular aspect of situ
2) attention
- attentional deployment: distraction/ concentration
3) appraisal
-cognitive change: reappraisal of situation
(these above 3 = all ‘antecedent-focused strategies’ = occur before emotion)
4) response
- response modification = suppression
(response-focussed = occurs after the emotion)
Koole(2009)
Braunstein, Gross & Ochsner (2007)
looked at the goal/target of regulation type chosen and the function of the strategy
emotion generating system can target:
1) attention
2) knowledge
3) embodiments
psychological function:
1) need- oriented
2) goal- oriented
3) person- oriented
Braunstein, Gross & Ochsner (2007)
Nature of regulation goal and emotion change process
how can these 4 strategies be used?
down regulation = aim to decrease and minimise the intensity or duration of emotional experience (usually negative
up regulation = aim to increase and maximise the intensity or duration of emotional experience
– usually down regulate negative emotion and up regulate positive (Gross, 2014)
= fits with HEDONIC accounts of regulation (Larsen,2000)
however, may down regulate positive emotions eg, if we’ve passed an exam that a friend hasn’t = down regulate positive (Guiliani et al, 2008)
( upregulate sadness at funeral etc)
which strategies are effective?
4 strategies
The role of context
Webb, Miles & Sheeran, 2012
- review of 306 studies that asked ps to use a strategy to regulate emotions and then examined effectiveness
eg. distraction vs rumination on mood (Donaldson & Larth, 2004)
– studied effects on 3 different types of outcome:
1) experiential
2) behavioural
3) physiological
found:
- DISTRACTION helped people to feel better, but did not influence behavioural or physiological measures
- CONCENTRATION exacerbated the emotion ie. made them feel worse
- REAPPRAISAL had a small-to-medium sized effect on emotional responses
- SUPPRESSION influenced behavioural measures but not influence how people actually felt and had a negative impact on physiological measures
suggests:
- different emotion regulatory processes are differentially effective
- reappraisal is an effective strategy
the role of context:
- effects of different strategies are context specific
- global conclusions regarding one strategy being ‘better’ than another are possibly misleading (Gross, 2014)
- shift in research to consider emotion regulation to be an interaction between: person/ situation/ strategy (Dove, Silvers & Ochsner, 2016)
- suggests that for effective and successful regulation we need to take into account and be able to flexibly switch between different strategies depending on the context (Troy et al, 2016)
Context factors:
- what type of person they are
- situation eg. alone/with other/ culture?
- strategy used
Study: Rottweiler, Taxer & Nett (2018)
ps reported mood, most intensely experienced emotion and whether it was regarding an exam-related or non-exam-related context
found:
- suppression improved mood in exam-related anxiety and distraction improved mood in only non-exam-related anxiety
- suggests its important not to classify strategies as effective vs ineffective but also consider context!
why is regulating emotions important?
helps people feel better in the short term = allows for successful day to day functioning (Christou-Champi, Farrow & Webb, 2015)
- associated with psychological well-being and physical health (Martins, Ramlho & Marin, 2010)
- creating and maintaining social relationships (Gross & John, 2003)
- achieving goals (Tamir et al, 2008)
- associated with work performance (Dietendorff et al, 2000)
short term = makes you feel better = more successful later on
