Facilitating adaptive emotional analysis: distinguishing distanced-analysis of depressive experiences from immersed-analysis and distraction

Two studies examined the psychological processes that facilitate adaptive emotional analysis. In Study 1, participants recalled a depression experience and then analyzed their feelings from either a self-immersed (immersed-analysis) or self-distanced (distanced-analysis) perspective. Participants in the distanced-analysis group focused less on recounting their experience and more on reconstruing it, which in turn led to lower levels of depressed affect. Furthermore, comparisons to a distraction group indicated that distanced-analysis was as effective as distraction in reducing depressed affect relative to the immersed-analysis group. Study 2 replicated these findings and showed that both 1 day and 7 days after the experimental manipulations, participants in the distanced-analysis group remained buffered against depressed affect and reported experiencing fewer recurring thoughts about their depression experience over time compared to both the immersed-analysis and distraction groups.     

"Asking why" from a distance: Its cognitive and emotional consequences for people with major depressive disorder

Although analyzing negative experiences leads to physical and mental health benefits among healthy populations, when people with depression engage in this process on their own they often ruminate and feel worse. Here we examine whether it is possible for adults with depression to analyze their feelings adaptively if they adopt a self-distanced perspective. We examined this issue by randomly assigning depressed and nondepressed adults to analyze their feelings surrounding a depressing life experience from either a self-distanced or a self-immersed perspective and then examined the implications of these manipulations for depressotypic thought accessibility, negative affect, implicit and explicit avoidance, and thought content. Four key results emerged. First, all participants were capable of self-distancing while analyzing their feelings. Second, participants who analyzed their feelings from a self-distanced perspective showed lower levels of depressotypic thought accessibility and negative affect compared to their self-immersed counterparts. Third, analyzing negative feelings from a self-distanced perspective led to an adaptive shift in the way people construed their experience-they recounted the emotionally arousing details of their experience less and reconstrued them in ways that promoted insight and closure. It did not promote avoidance. Finally, self-distancing did not influence negative affect or depressotypic thought accessibility among nondepressed participants. These findings suggest that whether depressed adults' attempts to analyze negative feelings lead to adaptive or maladaptive consequences may depend critically on whether they do so from a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

When asking "why" does not hurt. Distinguishing rumination from reflective processing of negative emotions

Two experiments examined the psychological operations that enable individuals to process negative emotions and experiences without increasing negative affect. In Study 1, type of self-perspective (self-immersed vs. self-distanced) and type of emotional focus (what vs. why) were experimentally manipulated following the recall of an anger-eliciting interpersonal experience. A why focus on emotions from a self-distanced perspective (distanced-why strategy) was expected to enable "cool," reflective processing of emotions, in which individuals can focus on their experience without reactivating excessive "hot" negative affect. Findings were consistent with this hypothesis. Study 2 replicated these findings and furthermore demonstrated that (a) the degree to which individuals construe their recalled experience in abstract versus concrete terms mediates the effect of the distanced-why strategy and (b) the status of the recalled experience (resolved vs. unresolved) does not moderate the effectiveness of the distanced-why strategy. These findings help disentangle the mechanisms that may allow adaptive working through from those that lead to rumination.     

When stepping outside the self is not enough: A self-distanced perspective reduces the experience of basic but not of self-conscious emotions

Despite recent increased interest in self-conscious emotions, few studies have investigated their regulation. The current research examines the effectiveness of self-perspective in regulating negative self-conscious (guilt, shame) versus basic (anger, sadness) emotions. We predict that adopting a distanced perspective on the self would attenuate the experience of anger and sadness, as previous research has shown (e.g., Kross et al., 2005). However, because the experience of self-conscious emotions involves self-evaluation as well as the evaluation of the self from the perspective of others, a self-distanced perspective may enable these emotions and fail to attenuate the experience of shame and guilt. As predicted, a self-distanced perspective attenuated feelings of sadness and anger, but not of shame and guilt. These findings suggest the appraisal of the experienced emotion (i.e., whether it involves self-evaluations and/or the perspective of others) may influence the effectiveness of emotion-regulation strategies.     

Analyzing Negative Experiences Without Ruminating: The Role of Self-Distancing in Enabling Adaptive Self-Reflection

Both common intuition and findings from multiple areas of research suggest that when faced with distressing experiences, it is helpful to understand one’s feelings. However, a large body of research also indicates that people’s attempts to make sense of their feelings often backfire, leading them to ruminate and feel worse. In this article, we describe a program of research that focuses on disentangling these seemingly contradictory sets of findings. The research program we describe proposes that psychological distance from the self plays a key role in determining whether people’s attempts to understand their feelings lead to adaptive or maladaptive self-reflection. It suggests that people’s attempts to understand their feelings often fail because they analyze their feelings from a self-immersed perspective rather than a self-distanced perspective. Empirical evidence from multiple levels of analysis is presented to support this prediction. The basic science and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.     

Remembering personal change for better or worse: Retrieval context matters

We investigated how focusing on the details (experience focus) versus self-narrative significance (coherence focus) of valenced transitions informs appraisals and emotions at recall. Participants (N = 302) selected a negative or positive transition and rated their emotion. Two weeks later, they described their event using an experience or coherence focus, then rated emotion, event impact, self-relevance, and memory characteristics. A coherence (vs. experience) focus produced lower negative affect and greater psychological impact, particularly for negative transitions. The negative-coherence group showed the largest decrease in negation emotion over time. A coherence (vs. experience) focus resulted in less perceptual detail, reactivity, and re-experiencing. Positive (vs. negative) events were deemed more central to identity and connected to other events. Mental focus informed psychological impact and negative affect, while event valence influenced self-relevance. These findings remained when event type (interpersonal) was matched across groups. Motives for framing autobiographical memories and implications for adaptive self-reflection are discussed.     

高边缘性人格障碍特质者负性沉浸的自我反思倾向

采用自我参照范式考察边缘性人格障碍(BPD)的自我反思特点。实验1对比高、低BPD特质被试在自我和姓名参照条件下正负性词汇的再认成绩,发现高BPD特质者在自我参照条件下的负性词汇记忆成绩显著高于低BPD特质组。实验2对高BPD特质被试进行正念自我反思训练,结果发现相对于对照组,训练组在自我参照条件下负性词汇的记忆成绩显著降低。高BPD特质者的自我反思存在负性沉浸倾向,且正念自我反思训练可以改善该倾向。     

自我聚焦对社交焦虑的影响：抽离与正念的调节作用

本文旨在探讨抽离和正念在自我聚焦对社交焦虑影响关系中的作用。两个研究分别采用相关法和实验法,探究自我聚焦内容（冗思、正念）和反思方式（浸入、抽离）对社交焦虑的交互影响。结果：问卷数据显示,抽离在自我聚焦注意影响社交焦虑的关系中起着调节作用,无论低抽离倾向还是高抽离倾向,自我聚焦注意都能预测社交焦虑,高抽离倾向减弱个体的社交焦虑感;实验结果表明,聚焦内容与反思方式两者交互作用于社交焦虑,浸入-聚焦冗思内容引发最强的社交焦虑,抽离-聚焦正念内容引发最弱的社交焦虑。结论：抽离和聚焦正念内容都最能有效缓解自我聚焦对社交焦虑的不良影响。     

Self-rumination, self-reflection, and depression: Self-rumination counteracts the adaptive effect of self-reflection

Self-focused attention has adaptive and maladaptive aspects: self-reflection and self-rumination [Trapnell, P. D., & Campbell, J. D. (1999). Private self-consciousness and the Five-Factor Model of personality: distinguishing rumination from reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 284-304]. Although reflection is thought to be associated with problem solving and the promotion of mental health, previous researches have shown that reflection does not always have an adaptive effect on depression. Authors have examined the causes behind this inconsistency by modeling the relationships among self-reflection, self-rumination, and depression. One hundred and eleven undergraduates (91 men and 20 women) participated in a two-time point assessment with a 3-week interval. Statistical analysis with structural equation modeling showed that self-reflection significantly predicted self-rumination, whereas self-rumination did not predict self-reflection. With regard to depression, self-reflection was associated with a lower level of depression; self-rumination, with a higher level of depression. The total effect of self-reflection on depression was almost zero. This result indicates that self-reflection per se has an adaptive effect, which is canceled out by the maladaptive effect of self-rumination, because reflectors are likely to ruminate and reflect simultaneously.     

Closure of autobiographical memories: The effects of written recounting from first- or third-person visual perspective

Autobiographical memories are recalled with varying degrees of psychological closure. Closure is a subjective assessment of how far a remembered experience feels resolved, and it has been suggested that one predictor of closure is the amount of emotional detail in the memory. Study 1 examined which aspect of emotional detail is important for closure, and showed that open and closed negative memories were distinguished by ratings of emotion evoked during recall, not by remembered emotion from the time of the event. The recall of open memories was accompanied by more intense, more negative, and less positive emotion than the recall of closed memories. Biased retelling of memories has been shown to influence closure and on the basis of evidence that third-person recall serves a distancing function, Study 2 examined whether instructions to repeatedly recount an open memory from a third-person perspective would increase closure compared with a single or repeated recounting from a first-person perspective. While repeated third-person recounting had the greatest influence on closure, there were also increases in the first-person recounting groups. The results suggest that closure can be increased by reporting memories in written narrative form, particularly if repeatedly expressed from the third-person perspective.     

Self-reflection,mood, and helpful behavior

Two pilot studies and two experiments were conducted to test for relationships between mood states, self-reflection, and helpfulness. It was hypothesized that both negative and positive feelings would increase helpful reactions. In the case of negative moods, however, helpfulness would be inhibited if the induced affect engenders self-reflection by associating the bad mood with the person's self-image in a self-referencing process. To test these predictions, female undergraduates read mood-inducing statements that were either (a) negative in content and containing the personal pronoun “I”, (b) negative but not self-referencing, (c) emotionally positive in content, (d) emotionally neutral, or (e) no statements. Afterward, they were asked to complete a questionnaire and to volunteer to participate in a future study. Findings in the first experiment confirmed the hypothesis. Women who had read negative, self-referencing statements were the least likely to comply with a helpful request. The most helpful participants were those who had previously recited the negative, but not self-referencing, and the positive statements. Neutral and control subjects displayed intermediate amounts of compliance with the helping request. Questionnaire results showed that self-reflection was responsible for decreasing the helpfulness of women when negative mood was associated with some aspect of the self. A second experiment successfully replicated the major findings of the pilot studies and the first experiment.     

Closure of autobiographical memories: The effects of written recounting from first- or third-person visual perspective

Autobiographical memories are recalled with varying degrees of psychological closure. Closure is a subjective assessment of how far a remembered experience feels resolved, and it has been suggested that one predictor of closure is the amount of emotional detail in the memory. Study 1 examined which aspect of emotional detail is important for closure, and showed that open and closed negative memories were distinguished by ratings of emotion evoked during recall, not by remembered emotion from the time of the event. The recall of open memories was accompanied by more intense, more negative, and less positive emotion than the recall of closed memories. Biased retelling of memories has been shown to influence closure and on the basis of evidence that third-person recall serves a distancing function, Study 2 examined whether instructions to repeatedly recount an open memory from a third-person perspective would increase closure compared with a single or repeated recounting from a first-person perspective. While repeated third-person recounting had the greatest influence on closure, there were also increases in the first-person recounting groups. The results suggest that closure can be increased by reporting memories in written narrative form, particularly if repeatedly expressed from the third-person perspective.     

Ruminative and reflective forms of self-focus: Their relationships with interpersonal skills and emotional reactivity under interpersonal stress

Self-focus can be divided into adaptive and maladaptive aspects, that is, self-reflection and self-rumination respectively. This study explores how these distinctive forms of self-focus are associated with interpersonal skills required for beginning and maintaining social relationships, and with negative emotional regulation when one experiences interpersonal problems. A survey of 150 undergraduates (Study 1) indicated contrasting cross-sectional associations between self-reflection and self-rumination and interpersonal skills; self-rumination is associated with perceived impaired interpersonal skills, whereas self-reflection is associated with the improved skills. In Study 2, using a four-wave longitudinal design, we investigated the buffering effects of self-rumination and self-reflection on negative emotional reactivity to interpersonal conflicts. Analysis of multilevel models indicated that self-rumination predicts a greater increase in negative affect after one experiences negative interpersonal events, whereas self-reflection had no such effects on the negative affect. These results suggest that self-rumination is associated with perceived impaired interpersonal skills, which could delay problem solving and exacerbate the effect of interpersonal problems, thereby leading to dysphoria. In contrast, self-reflection might contribute to the maintenance of relationships in usual or stable conditions but does not aid emotion regulation or problem solving in difficult or negative situations such as when one experiences interpersonal problems.     

Flies on the wall are less aggressive: Self-distancing “in the heat of the moment” reduces aggressive thoughts,angry feelings and aggressive behavior

People tend to ruminate after being provoked, which is like using gasoline to put out a fire—it feeds the flame by keeping aggressive thoughts and angry feelings active. In contrast, reflecting over past provocations from a self-distanced or “fly on the wall” perspective reduces aggressive thoughts and angry feelings. However, it is unclear whether people can self-distance “in the heat of the moment” (i.e., immediately after being provoked), and if they can, whether doing so reduces actual aggressive behavior. Two experiments addressed these issues. The results indicated that provoked participants who self-distanced had fewer aggressive thoughts and angry feelings (Experiment 1) and displayed less aggressive behavior (Experiment 2) than participants who self-immersed or were in a control group. These findings demonstrate that people can self-distance in the heat of the moment, and that doing so reduces aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behavior.     

Maternal distress in the context of their child’s type 1 diabetes: exploring the role of adaptive maternal emotion regulation on child outcomes

Parents of children with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) experience high levels of distress, which may negatively impact child functioning. However, little is known about mechanisms that may buffer the adverse impact of parental distress. The current study explored the possible buffering role of maternal adaptive cognitive emotion regulation (CER) for the relationship between maternal distress and child psychological functioning. Forty-three children with T1D (8–15 years) completed measures assessing trait anxiety and depressive symptoms. Their mothers reported on general distress, illness-related parenting stress, and adaptive CER. Maternal illness-related parenting stress (but not general distress) was significantly associated with child psychological functioning. No buffering role for maternal adaptive CER was observed. As the current study is rather preliminary, future research using other methods to examine maternal adaptive CER, and examining other parental variables that may buffer against the negative impact of parental distress is warranted.     

A dual-motive model of scapegoating: displacing blame to reduce guilt or increase control

The authors present a model that specifies 2 psychological motives underlying scapegoating, defined as attributing inordinate blame for a negative outcome to a target individual or group, (a) maintaining perceived personal moral value by minimizing feelings of guilt over one's responsibility for a negative outcome and (b) maintaining perceived personal control by obtaining a clear explanation for a negative outcome that otherwise seems inexplicable. Three studies supported hypotheses derived from this dual-motive model. Framing a negative outcome (environmental destruction or climate change) as caused by one's own harmful actions (value threat) or unknown sources (control threat) both increased scapegoating, and these effects occurred indirectly through feelings of guilt and perceived personal control, respectively (Study 1), and were differentially moderated by affirmations of moral value and personal control (Study 2). Also, scapegoating in response to value threat versus control threat produced divergent, theoretically specified effects on self-perceptions and behavioral intentions (Study 3).     

How Does Family Connectedness Contribute to Youths’ Health? The Mediating Role of Coping Strategies

Family connectedness has important implications for adolescents’ well-being, contributing to their physical, psychological, and social health. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these effects. The present longitudinal study examined the process by which family connectedness, as perceived by adolescents, predicted greater positive and fewer negative health behaviors in adolescents over time. In particular, we sought to determine whether adaptive and maladaptive coping strategies mediated the link between family connectedness and adolescents’ self-reported health status. Data were obtained from 1,774 New Zealand adolescents aged 10–17 years, who completed a self-report survey three times at one-year intervals. With longitudinal mediation path models, we tested whether maladaptive and adaptive coping strategies at T2 functioned as mediators between family connectedness at T1 and overall health, vitality, sleep sufficiency, body satisfaction, substance use, and self-harm at T3. Findings revealed that family connectedness predicted greater levels of adaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted better health indicators but not decreases in ill-health indicators. Furthermore, family connectedness predicted lower maladaptive coping, which, in turn, predicted higher levels of positive health outcomes and fewer negative health outcomes. Results showed that the positive effect of family connectedness on adolescents’ health occurred through increased use of adaptive coping strategies, decreased use of maladaptive coping strategies, or both. These results have important implications for practitioners working with adolescents and parents, as well as for health promotion program developers.     

Cognitive Errors as Predictors of Adaptive and Maladaptive Perfectionism in Children

Cognitive distortions such as dichotomous evaluation of performance, selectively focusing on perceived failures, and discounting successes are proposed to be key maintaining mechanisms in clinical perfectionism, but no existing research has investigated the relationship between perfectionism and cognitive errors in children. The current study assessed the associations between dimensions of perfectionism as assessed by the Adaptive/Maladaptive Perfectionism Scale (AMPS) and children??s cognitive errors controlling for negative and positive affect to provide information about cognitive features associated with perfectionism in children and construct-related evidence for the AMPS. A non-clinical sample of 204 children completed the AMPS, the Children??s Negative Cognitive Errors Questionnaire, and measures of positive and negative affect. The AMPS sensitivity to mistakes scale was correlated robustly with catastrophizing, overgeneralization, personalizing, and selective abstraction. Cognitive errors were significant predictors of maladaptive perfectionism even after controlling for negative affect. However, cognitive errors did not predict adaptive perfectionism after controlling for positive affect. These findings highlight the role of negative thinking styles in maladaptive perfectionism in children and point to the potential usefulness of interventions that focus jointly on maladaptive perfectionism and negative cognitive styles.     

The benefits of youth

We examine human psychological development from an evolutionary perspective and propose that some aspects of developmental immaturity have been selected for their adaptive value either for individuals at a specific time in development (ontogenetic adaptations) or as preparation for adulthood (deferred adaptations). We review research and theory on the possible adaptive role of immaturity in human development, focusing on play, neural plasticity, and cognitive limitations that may foster the development of sensory systems, learning/education, and caretaking by adults. We argue that considering the possible adaptive features of immaturity, along with the obvious maladaptive ones, provides a more accurate picture of ontogeny and ways to foster healthy psychological development.     

Examination of the Relationship Between Perfectionism and Religiosity as Mediated by Psychological Inflexibility

A relationship between perfectionism and religiosity has been suggested in the literature, and this relationship is clarified further when the adaptive and maladaptive dimensions of both constructs are compared. Literature in both areas implicates the idea of a rigid and inflexible personality style that may explain why well meaning high standards can be associated with negative outcomes such as perfectionism. This investigation examined the relationship of perfectionism and religiosity, using adaptive and maladaptive dimensions, as mediated by psychological inflexibility. Validated measures of perfectionism, religiosity, and psychological inflexibility were given to 376 undergraduate college students in an anonymous online survey. Adaptive perfectionism (high standards) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .26, p < .01, two-tailed) with adaptive religiosity (intrinsic orientation). Maladaptive perfectionism (discrepancy) was found to be significantly correlated (r = .13, p < .05, two-tailed) with maladaptive religiosity (extrinsic orientation). Psychological inflexibility was found to be significantly correlated with the maladaptive dimensions of both perfectionism and religiosity. It was also shown to mediate the relationship between maladaptive (extrinsic) religiosity and maladaptive (discrepancy) perfectionism. Implications and future directions are discussed.