Individual differences in reappraisal ability: Links to reappraisal frequency, well-being, and cognitive control

Reappraisal is generally viewed as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. Reappraisal frequency has been associated with greater well-being, and reappraisal ability is thought to be composed of several crucial cognitive control processes. However, the relationships among reappraisal ability, reappraisal frequency, well-being, and various cognitive control processes have not yet been determined. In this study, we experimentally examined individual differences in reappraisal ability (RA), and also assessed reappraisal frequency, well-being, and several cognitive control processes. We observed a positive relationship between RA, reappraisal frequency, and well-being. RA was also related positively to working memory capacity and set-shifting costs, and marginally related to abstract reasoning. These findings have important implications for understanding the cognitive components and affective outcomes of RA.     

Sex differences in the indirect effects of cognitive processes on anxiety through emotion regulation difficulties

Drawing on a gender roles theory of emotion regulation, we examined the specific facets of emotion regulation difficulties through which higher-order cognitive abilities may be related to anxiety. Participants (N = 225) completed self-report measures of emotion regulation difficulties and anxiety, and were administered neuropsychological tests assessing abstract reasoning and inhibition. PROCESS (Hayes, 2012) was used to estimate the direct and indirect effects of both inhibition and abstract reasoning on anxiety symptoms, with six dimensions of emotion regulation difficulties serving as multiple mediators operating in parallel. Results suggest that the relation between higher-order cognitive abilities and anxiety operate through distinct, sex-dependent emotion dysregulation mechanisms. For females, higher levels of inhibition and abstract thinking were associated with poorer clarity of emotions, which in turn, was associated with higher levels of anxiety symptoms. As such, over-attentiveness to, or over-analysis of, emotions may be particularly detrimental among females who have relatively higher abstract reasoning abilities. For males, higher inhibition was associated with greater perceived effectiveness in regulating negative emotions, which in turn, was associated with lower levels of anxiety symptoms. This finding suggests that mood regulation expectancies may be particularly important in understanding the pathogenesis of anxiety in males.     

Gender and age differences in emotion regulation strategies and their relationship to depressive symptoms

We examined differences between men and women, and between young, middle and older age adults in emotion regulation strategies (rumination, suppression, reappraisal, problem-solving, acceptance, social support) and the relationships between these strategies and depressive symptoms. Women were more likely than men to report using several different emotion regulation strategies, and these gender differences were significant even after statistically controlling for gender differences in depressive symptoms. Use of most strategies decreased with age, with two exceptions: (1) use of suppression increased with age for women but not for men and (2) use of acceptance did not decrease with age for women. Use of maladaptive strategies was associated with more depressive symptoms in all age groups and both genders, yet, the use of adaptive strategies generally was not related to lower levels depressive symptoms across groups.     

A preliminary investigation of sex differences in associations between emotion regulation difficulties and higher-order cognitive abilities

The present study sought to clarify the cognitive correlates of emotion regulation difficulties (ERD). Further, because prior evidence suggests sex differences in emotion regulation, sex was examined as a moderator of associations between cognitive abilities and ERD. Participants (N = 154) completed self-report measures of ERD, and were administered neuropsychological tests assessing crystallized and fluid intelligence, as well as various components of executive functioning. Bivariate correlations and results from regression analyses suggested sex-dependent associations among cognitive processes and ERD. For men, inhibition of dominant response tendencies was associated with lower ERD, whereas for women, a host of executive abilities (e.g., greater inhibition, cognitive flexibility, semantic processing, abstract reasoning) were associated with greater ERD. Implications for the neurocognitive conceptualization of emotion dysregulation will be discussed.     

Investigating the relationship between working memory and emotion regulation in mothers

Recent work suggests that executive functions, specifically working memory, may facilitate emotion regulation (ER). Here we examined whether measures of visuospatial working memory and verbal working memory relate to ER in a group of recent mothers. We found that while visuospatial working memory was associated with, and predictive of, self-reported measures of ER and emotion dysregulation—verbal working memory was correlated to only one dimension of emotion dysregulation. These findings suggest that working memory may play a unique role in everyday regulatory functioning. We frame our results in terms of the broader implications they may have for the potential role of executive functioning in parenting.     

Individual differences in attachment and dispositional mindfulness: The mediating role of emotion regulation

Recent interest in the relationship between individual differences in attachment and dispositional mindfulness has led to empirical investigations into this association. Although several studies have demonstrated an association between attachment and mindfulness, little is known as to why these two seemingly distinct constructs are related. In a sample of 572 individuals we explored whether the relationship between attachment and mindfulness was mediated by emotion regulation difficulties. Difficulties in emotion regulation fully mediated the association between attachment anxiety and mindfulness, and between attachment avoidance and mindfulness. Thus, the mechanism by which attachment and mindfulness are related is through emotion regulation difficulties. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

Emotion regulation in depression: Examining the role of cognitive processes

Sustained negative affect is a hallmark feature of depressive episodes. The ability to regulate emotional responses to negative events may therefore play a critical role in our understanding of this debilitating disorder. Individual differences in cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and interpretation may underlie difficulties in emotion regulation and numerous studies have identified cognitive biases and deficits that characterise depressed people. Few studies, however, have explicitly linked these biases to the difficulties in emotion regulation that are associated with depression. In this paper we discuss relations among cognitive processes and emotion regulation and review the depression literature to identify cognitive biases and deficits that may underlie maladaptive responses to negative events and mood states. Our review suggests that difficulties in the disengagement from negative material, memory biases, and deficits in cognitive control are frequently observed in depressive disorders and may be associated with the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, such as rumination. These biases may also be related to difficulties implementing strategies that are effective for non-depressed people, such as recall of mood-incongruent material and reappraisal. Our review also suggests, however, that empirical studies linking cognitive biases and emotion regulation in depression are still largely missing and would present an important goal for future research in this area.     

Negative life events, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional problems

A new questionnaire, named the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, has been constructed, measuring nine cognitive coping strategies people tend to use after having experienced negative life events. A test–retest design was used to study the psychometric properties and relationships with measures of depression and anxiety among 547 high school youngsters. Principal component analyses supported the allocation of items to subscales, while alphas of most subscales exceeded 0.80. Cognitive coping strategies were found to play an important role in the relationship between the experience of negative life events and the reporting of symptoms of depression and anxiety. The results suggest that cognitive coping strategies may be a valuable context of prevention and intervention     

The role of individual differences in emotion regulation efficacy

Emotion regulation (ER) helps to maintain mental health and achieve optimal functioning. Whether people benefit from various ER strategies may depend on individual difference variables. A sample of undergraduates (N = 378, M_age = 18.6) underwent a negative emotion induction and then were assigned to learn about and perform an ER strategy (cognitive reappraisal, acceptance, or distraction). We tested whether individual differences (cognitive restructuring skills, need for cognition, mindfulness, and experiential avoidance) moderated the efficacy of ER (i.e., decreased negative emotion from before to after applying the strategy). Experientially avoidant individuals had less efficacy in applying the acceptance strategy, compared to the cognitive reappraisal and distraction strategies. Motivation and perceived ability to use each strategy were examined as mediators.     

Inhibitory control and emotion regulation in preschool children

This research investigated the relation between individual differences in inhibitory control and emotion regulation. Preschool children (N = 53) ages 4–6 (M = 5; 0) were assessed on brief batteries of inhibitory control of prepotent responses and emotion regulation. Individual differences in inhibitory control were significantly correlated with children's ability to regulate their emotions. This relation held up even after controlling for age and verbal ability, and persisted for both Emotion Understanding and “online” control of emotional expressions that were negative (Disappointing Gift) or positive (Secret Keeping). Parent report of children's self-control and emotion regulation corroborated the behavioral results. These findings suggest that executive control of attention, action, and emotion are skills that develop in concert in the preschool period. However, there was also evidence of a quadratic relation in which emotion regulation was optimal at intermediate levels of inhibition, highlighting the interplay of both cognitive control and temperament in socio-emotional functioning.     

Effective regulation of affect: An action control perspective on emotion regulation

The present review adopts an action control perspective on emotion regulation, contextualising the gap between emotion control goals (e.g., I want to remain calm) and emotional outcomes (e.g., anger, anxiety, and aggression) in terms of the broader literature on goal pursuit. We propose that failure to effectively regulate emotions can result from difficulties with the self-regulatory tasks of (i) identifying the need to regulate, (ii) deciding whether and how to regulate, and (iii) enacting a regulation strategy. Next we review evidence that a technique traditionally associated with regulating behavioural goals (forming implementation intentions or “if-then” planning) can help to overcome these difficulties. Meta-analysis indicated that forming implementation intentions is effective in modifying emotional outcomes, with a large effect relative to no regulation instructions (k = 21, N = 1306 d ₊ = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.61 to 1.20) and a medium-sized effect relative to goal intention instructions (k = 29, N = 1208, d ₊ = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.42 to 0.65). Our conclusion is that research on emotion regulation might benefit from an action control perspective and the interventions that this perspective offers.     

Individual differences in cognitive control over emotional material modulate cognitive biases linked to depressive symptoms

Deficient cognitive control over emotional material and cognitive biases are important mechanisms underlying depression, but the interplay between these emotionally distorted cognitive processes in relation to depressive symptoms is not well understood. This study investigated the relations among deficient cognitive control of emotional information (i.e. inhibition, shifting, and updating difficulties), cognitive biases (i.e. negative attention and interpretation biases), and depressive symptoms. Theory-driven indirect effect models were constructed, hypothesising that deficient cognitive control over emotional material predicts depressive symptoms through negative attention and interpretation biases. Bootstrapping analyses demonstrated that deficient inhibitory control over negative material was related to negative attention bias which in turn predicted a congruent bias in interpretation and subsequently depressive symptoms. Both shifting and updating impairments in response to negative material had an indirect effect on depression severity through negative interpretation bias. No evidence was found for direct effects of deficient cognitive control over emotional material on depressive symptoms. These findings may help to formulate an integrated understanding of the cognitive foundations of depressive symptoms.     

Dynamic processes in emotion regulation choice

ABSTRACT

Because emotion regulation (ER) processes operate over time, they potentially change the context in which subsequent ER processes occur. To test this proposal, fifty-two healthy participants completed the ER choice task. Thirty standardized low- and high-intensity negative images were used to generate different emotional contexts in which participants selected between distraction or reappraisal strategies to decrease the intensity of their negative emotion. Participants then implemented their selected strategy and rated their negative emotion. Using a dynamic perspective, we examined as predictors of ER strategy choice, in addition to current stimulus intensity, several contextual factors from the immediately preceding trial: preceding stimulus intensity and strategy choice, and the intensity of negative affect following the previous strategy implementation and thus preceding the current trial. Results replicated earlier findings that participants are more likely to choose distraction for high-intensity images. Extending earlier findings, selecting reappraisal in the preceding trial and greater negative affect preceding the current trial were associated with lower odds of choosing distraction. The lack of significant interactions among the current and preceding trial factors suggests that these effects on ER choice were direct and not through moderating the effect of current stimulus intensity. These findings support dynamic theories of ER.     

Integrating working memory capacity and context-processing views of cognitive control

Individuals low in working memory capacity (WMC) exhibit impaired performance on a variety of cognitive control tasks. The executive-attention theory of WMC (Engle & Kane, [2004[) accounts for these findings as failures of goal maintenance and response conflict resolution. Similarly, the context-processing view (Braver et al., [2001]) provides an explanation of cognitive control deficits observed in schizophrenia patients and older adults that is based on the ability to maintain context information. Instead of maintenance deficits, the inhibition view (Hasher, Lustig, & Zacks, [2007]) states that older adults and individuals low in WMC primarily have an impairment in the ability to inhibit information. In the current experiment, we explored the relationships among these theories. Individuals differing in performance on complex span measures of WMC performed the AX-Continuous Performance Test to measure context-processing performance. High-WMC individuals were predicted to maintain the context afforded by the cue, whereas low-WMC individuals were predicted to fail to maintain the context information. Low-WMC individuals made more errors on AX and BX trials and were slower to respond correctly on AX, BX, and BY trials. The overall pattern of results is most consistent with both the executive-attention and context-processing theories of cognitive control.     

Recollecting positive and negative autobiographical memories disrupts working memory

The present article reports two experiments examining the impact of recollecting emotionally valenced autobiographical memories on subsequent working memory (WM) task performance. Experiment 1 found that negatively valenced recollection significantly disrupted performance on a supra-span spatial WM task. Experiment 2 replicated and extended these findings to a verbal WM task (digit recall), and found that both negative and positive autobiographical recollections had a detrimental effect on verbal WM. In addition, we observed that these disruptive effects were more apparent on early trials, immediately following autobiographical recollection. Overall, these findings show that both positive and negative affect can disrupt WM when the mood-eliciting context is based on autobiographical memories. Furthermore, these results indicate that the emotional disruption of WM can take place across different modalities of WM (verbal and visuo-spatial).     

Early antecedents of emotion differentiation and regulation: Experience tunes the appraisal thresholds of emotional development in infancy

In this review, we synthesize evidence to highlight cognitive appraisal as an important developmental antecedent of individual differences in emotion differentiation and adept emotion regulation. Emotion differentiation is the degree to which emotions are experienced in a nuanced or “granular” way—as specific and separable phenomena. More extensive differentiation is related to positive wellbeing and has emerged as a correlate of emotion regulation skill among adults. We argue that the cognitive appraisal processes that underlie these facets of emotional development are instantiated early in the first year of life and tuned by environmental input and experience. Powerful socializing input in the form of caregivers’ contingent and selective responding to infants’ emotional signals carves and calibrates the infant’s appraisal thresholds for what in their world ought to be noticed, deemed as important or personally meaningful, and responded to (whether and how). These appraisal thresholds are thus unique to the individual child despite the ubiquity of the appraisal process in emotional responding. This appraisal infrastructure, while plastic and continually informed by experience across the lifespan, likely tunes subsequent emotion differentiation, with implications for children’s emotion regulatory choices and skills. We end with recommendations for future research in this area, including the urgent need for developmental emotion science to investigate the diverse sociocultural contexts in which children’s cognitive appraisals, differentiation of emotions, and regulatory responses are being built across childhood.     

Transdiagnostic emotion regulation processes in bipolar disorder and insomnia

Research and treatment have traditionally adopted a 'disorder-focused' approach by targeting one specific disorder, aiming to understanding its cause, maintenance and treatment. The aim of the present study was to contribute to the burgeoning interest in examining common, or 'transdiagnostic,' processes across disorders. Three candidate transdiagnostic processes involved in emotion regulation - rumination, worry, and automatic negative thoughts - were examined in euthymic bipolar I disorder (n=21) and insomnia (n=19), and a non-clinical control group (n=20). Rumination and worry were endorsed to a larger degree by the bipolar and insomnia groups compared to the control group. However, while the bipolar group had more negative automatic thoughts than the control group, there were no significant differences in negative automatic thoughts between the bipolar and insomnia groups or the insomnia and control groups. These results suggested that rumination and worry, but not negative automatic thoughts, might be common across bipolar disorder and insomnia. However, these findings no longer remained significant when current symptoms of anxiety and depression were controlled for. Prospective and experimental studies are needed to test the extent to which these processes contribute to the etiology or maintenance of insomnia and bipolar disorder.     

Happiness increases verbal and spatial working memory capacity where sadness does not: Emotion,working memory and executive control

The effects of emotion on working memory and executive control are often studied in isolation. Positive mood enhances verbal and impairs spatial working memory, whereas negative mood enhances spatial and impairs verbal working memory. Moreover, positive mood enhances executive control, whereas negative mood has little influence. We examined how emotion influences verbal and spatial working memory capacity, which requires executive control to coordinate between holding information in working memory and completing a secondary task. We predicted that positive mood would improve both verbal and spatial working memory capacity because of its influence on executive control. Positive, negative and neutral moods were induced followed by completing a verbal (Experiment 1) or spatial (Experiment 2) working memory operation span task to assess working memory capacity. Positive mood enhanced working memory capacity irrespective of the working memory domain, whereas negative mood had no influence on performance. Thus, positive mood was more successful holding information in working memory while processing task-irrelevant information, suggesting that the influence mood has on executive control supersedes the independent effects mood has on domain-specific working memory.     

Individual differences in higher-level cognitive abilities do not predict overconfidence in complex task performance

Even when people perform tasks poorly, they often report unrealistically positive estimates of their own abilities in these situations. To better understand the origins of such overconfidence, we investigated whether it could be predicted by individual differences in working memory, attentional control, and self-reported trait impulsivity. Overconfidence was estimated by contrasting objective and subjective measures of situation awareness (the ability to perceive and understand task-relevant information in the environment), acquired during a challenging air traffic control simulation. We found no significant relationships between overconfidence and either working memory or attentional control. However, increased impulsivity significantly predicted greater overconfidence. In addition, overall levels of overconfidence were lower in our complex task than in previous studies that used less-complex lab-based tasks. Our results suggest that overconfidence may not be linked to high-level cognitive abilities, but that dynamic tasks with frequent opportunities for performance feedback may reduce misconceptions about personal performance.     

Cognitive reappraisal and acceptance: an experimental comparison of two emotion regulation strategies

The purpose of the present study was to compare the effect of cognitive reappraisal and acceptance on subjective distress, physiological reactions and behavioral avoidance in relation to aversive emotional states elicited by film-clips. Ninety-four participants were randomized to one of three groups. The Reappraisal group was instructed to think about what they saw in a way that minimized negative emotional reactions, the Acceptance group was told to let their feelings come and go without trying to control or avoid them, while the Watch (control) group was told just to watch the film-clips. Compared to the control condition, both reappraisal and acceptance led to significant reductions of subjective distress, physiological reactions associated with aversive emotions and behavioral avoidance. On the three types of measures there were few significant differences between the Reappraisal and Acceptance groups, but when such differences existed they were to the benefit of the Reappraisal condition. In the reappraisal condition there was however a positive correlation between elicited aversive emotion and avoidance, while no such correlation existed in the acceptance condition. The results are interpreted and discussed in relation to the theories underlying reappraisal and acceptance as well as the conceptual framework for emotion regulation established by Gross (2007).