What Do People Want to Feel and Why?: Pleasure and Utility in Emotion Regulation

ABSTRACT— It is typically assumed that people always want to feel good. Recent evidence, however, demonstrates that people want to feel unpleasant emotions, such as anger or fear, when these emotions promote the attainment of their long-term goals. If emotions are regulated for instrumental reasons, people should want to feel pleasant emotions when immediate benefits outweigh future benefits, but when future benefits outweigh immediate benefits, people may prefer to feel useful emotions, even if they are unpleasant. In this article, I describe an instrumental account of emotion regulation, review empirical evidence relevant to it, and discuss its implications for promoting adaptive emotional experiences.     

Integrating Diverse Developmental Perspectives on Emotion Regulation

Emotion regulation has been studied in diverse ways within different subdisciplines of psychology—most notably social development, personality and individual differences, social psychophysiology, interpersonal relationships, and stress and coping. The goal of this Special Issue is to demonstrate the value of integrating these diverse approaches for building multilevel, lifespan models of emotion regulation. We review each of the contributions to this special issue, highlighting recurring themes and previewing our own perspective on directions for future theory and research.     

具身的情绪：情绪研究的新范式

在计算机隐喻的影响下,认知加工情绪理论成为现代情绪理论的主要支柱。计算机隐喻陷入困境后,具身认知的观点逐渐被人们接纳,具身认知在情绪研究中的应用——具身的情绪可以解除情绪研究的传统局限,摆脱情绪非心即身的两难选择,从而开启了情绪研究的新范式。     

Should we suppress or reappraise our stress?: the moderating role of reappraisal on cortisol reactivity and recovery in healthy adults

Background: People differ in their ability to regulate their physiological stress response. Individual differences in emotion regulation strategies such as suppression and reappraisal may explain this differential response to stress.

Objective: The aim of the current study was to assess whether daily use of suppression and reappraisal as well as their interaction predicted physiological stress reactivity and/or recovery, as assessed by variations in cortisol levels.

Method: Thirty-eight healthy young adults (13 men) completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and were exposed to a psychosocial stressor, throughout which salivary cortisol was measured.

Results: Linear regressions showed main effects of reappraisal and suppression on cortisol reactivity and a main effect of suppression on cortisol recovery, where both strategies were positively associated with stress phases. Moreover, results showed a significant interaction of suppression by reappraisal in predicting both cortisol reactivity and recovery. Simple slope tests revealed that reappraisal moderated the association between suppression and both phases of cortisol responsivity.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that reappraisal represents a protective factor against the deleterious effects of suppression on stress responsivity. This study underlines the importance of investigating emotion regulation strategies as a means to understand individual differences in vulnerability to stress-related psychopathologies such as anxiety and depression.     

知情交互作用的实证研究现状与展望

知情交互作用(the interaction of cognition-emotion)是指认知与情绪之间相互作用,相互影响,二者密不可分.当前,知情交互作用的研究主要涉及两个方面:一是认知对情绪的影响,即认知对情绪的产生和情绪调节的影响;二是情绪对认知的影响,即情绪对感知觉、记忆和思维的影响.本文从实证角度,综合相关文献选取各自领域具有代表性的最新研究成果进行了概要述评,并进一步指出未来的研究应该在无意识情绪的脑机制、情绪-想象的交互作用、情绪-语言的交互作用,以及知-情-行的整合等方面进一步探讨.     

Emotion in Later Life

Recent research investigating emotion in old age suggests that autonomic responsiveness diminishes with age. The experiential aspects of emotion, however, show less marked age differences. Despite the health-related and social losses of old age, research findings on changes in the frequency and valence of affect in old age are inconsistent, and those studies that have reported changes have found only small ones. Studies of emotion regulation have found evidence of increasing self-regulatory skill with age. Theoretical accounts of emotional development in late life emphasize the integration of cognitive and affective processes, but differ in whether accommodative mechanisms are considered to be as effective as proactive mechanisms in reaching emotional goals.     

Is the glass half empty or half full and does it even matter? Cognition,emotion, and psychopathology

ABSTRACT

This contribution examines the outcomes of recent decades of research on the interaction between cognition and emotion and how it has informed our understanding and treatment of emotional disorders with a special focus on depression. The review identifies important challenges to this work including the dynamic nature of cognitive processes and emotional responding, the bidirectional relation of cognition and emotion, the need for new tasks and for studies conducted outside of the laboratory, and the consideration of context such as interpersonal factors. Examining interactions between cognition and emotion and integrating basic research on cognition into the scientific understanding of emotional difficulties in psychopathology has contributed in many ways to what the field currently knows about the origins and the treatment of emotional disorders. Important challenges lie ahead – especially the integration of this work into the development of novel treatment approaches.     

发展视野下的生命认知:研究取向与整合

根据\"生命认知\"的定义及该领域的研究进展,以儿童和青少年为主要分析对象,将其分为三大研究取向:\"知\"的看法和理解、\"情\"的体验和感悟、\"意\"的探索和领悟,并依次介绍目前国内外研究者在各取向的研究成果.文章最后指出,该领域的研究应注重:研究范畴的界定、\"知情意\"的三者结合、研究方法的可行性和研究视角的选取,以此来更全面地探寻儿童和青少年生命认知的发展特点及其规律,为生命教育提供实证依据.     

关于儿童道德情绪判断的研究进展

该阐释了道德情绪的基本概念,论述了关于儿童道德情绪判断的近期研究结论及其影响因素。3～10岁儿童的道德情绪判断经历了一个从不高兴到高兴再到不高兴的发展过程,这一进程受到儿童的内在社会认知能力(儿童能否理解愿望是一种主观的心理特性、考虑道德因素的能力、观点采择能力,对犯过人格特质的理解等)及其所处的外在情境因素(所面临情境或事件的性质、情境的不一致性等)的影响。最后,作对该领域的研究趋向做出了展望。     

自我损耗对工作记忆的影响及其克服

实验1考察了自我损耗对工作记忆的影响。40名6年级小学生被随机分配到实验组和控制组,分别完成损耗任务和非损耗任务。结果发现,与控制组相比,实验组被试的工作记忆容量明显降低。实验2考察积极情绪能否克服自我损耗对工作记忆的负面影响。40名6年级小学生参加了实验。在完成损耗任务后,采用自传式回忆的方法诱发实验组的积极情绪。结果发现,诱发被试的积极情绪体验,能够克服自我损耗对于工作记忆的消极影响。     

Emotion experience and regulation in China and the United States: How do culture and gender shape emotion responding?

Culture and gender shape emotion experience and regulation, in part because the value placed on emotions and the manner of their expression is thought to vary across these groups. This study tested the hypothesis that culture and gender would interact to predict people's emotion responding (emotion intensity and regulatory strategies). Chinese (n=220; 52% female) and American undergraduates (n=241; 62% female) viewed photos intended to elicit negative emotions after receiving instructions to either \"just feel\" any emotions that arose (Just Feel), or to \"do something\" so that they would not experience any emotion while viewing the photos (Regulate). All participants then rated the intensity of their experienced emotions and described any emotion-regulation strategies that they used while viewing the photos. Consistent with predictions, culture and gender interacted with experimental condition to predict intensity: Chinese men reported relatively low levels of emotion, whereas American women reported relatively high levels of emotion. Disengagement strategies (especially distancing) were related to lower emotional intensity and were reported most often by Chinese men. Taken together, findings suggest that emotion-regulation strategies may contribute to differences in emotional experience across Western and East Asian cultures.     

小学儿童情绪认知发展研究

本研究采用故事情境法探究小学儿童情绪认知的发展。随机抽取60名小学儿童（2、4、6年级各20名）,研究他们对五种不同的情绪状态识别、情绪原因认知、情绪外在行为表现认知以及对情绪后继调节方式的认知发展特点。结果发现：总体而言,情绪认知在小学不同年级有明显发展;基本情绪认知最好,其次是积极自我意识情绪认知和冲突情绪认知,对消极自我意识情绪的认知最差;情绪识别和情绪原因认知明显好于情绪行为认知和情绪调节认知;对情绪表现者的情绪认知明显好于对情绪接受者的情绪认知。     

Gender Stereotypes of Emotional Reactions: How We Judge an Emotion as Valid

In this paper we report a partial replication of the finding that women face a double-bind with respect to emotional expression (Kelly & Hutson-Comeaux, 2000) and explore the hypothesis that gender-inconsistent emotional reactions are perceived to be more valid indicators of one's underlying emotional experience than gender-consistent emotional reactions. Men and women evaluated the appropriateness and sincerity of women's and men's overreactions to happy and angry events in both interpersonal and achievement contexts. Women's overreactions to happy events were judged as less appropriate and their emotional reactions were perceived as less sincere than were men's, particularly in an interpersonal context. In addition, men's overreactions to angry events in the interpersonal context were judged as less appropriate and less sincere than were women's. Implications of the findings for other types of social judgments are discussed.     

Children's Responses to Entry Failure: Attention Deployment Patterns and Self-Regulation Skills

In this study the authors investigated associations among children's observed responses to failure in an analogue entry situation, their attention deployment patterns, and skills and processes associated with self-regulation. Participants were 54 kindergarten and first-grade students who were either aggressive-rejected or low aggressive-popular based on peer nominations. Inhibitory control predicted the tendency to respond to entry failure by stopping and watching the group's activity. Baseline vagal tone and other-directed attention predicted children's tendency to change entry strategies after failure. Parent-rated attention skills moderated the relation between children's attention deployment patterns during the entry task and their responses to entry failure. Children who engaged in more other-directed attention were less likely to turn to solitary play after entry failure but only if they had high or moderate levels of attentional control. Other-directed attention was related to repeating previous entry bids without modification after entry failure but only when children had high levels of attention problems.