Knowing when to seek anger: Psychological health and context-sensitive emotional preferences

According to hedonic approaches to psychological health, healthy individuals should pursue pleasant and avoid unpleasant emotions. According to instrumental approaches, however, healthy individuals should pursue useful and avoid harmful emotions, whether pleasant or unpleasant. We sought to reconcile these approaches by distinguishing between preferences for emotions that are aggregated across contexts and preferences for emotions within specific contexts. Across five days, we assessed daily confrontational and collaborative demands and daily preferences for anger and happiness. Somewhat consistent with hedonic approaches, when averaging across contexts, psychologically healthier individuals wanted to feel less anger, but not more happiness. Somewhat consistent with instrumental approaches, when examined within contexts, psychologically healthier individuals wanted to feel angrier in more confrontational contexts, and some wanted to feel happier in more collaborative contexts. Thus, although healthier individuals are motivated to avoid unpleasant emotions over time, they are more motivated to experience them when they are potentially useful.     

When feeling bad is expected to be good: emotion regulation and outcome expectancies in social conflicts

According to the instrumental approach to emotion regulation, people may want to experience even unpleasant emotions to attain instrumental benefits. Building on value-expectancy models of self-regulation, we tested whether people want to feel bad in certain contexts specifically because they expect such feelings to be useful to them. In two studies, participants were more likely to try to increase their anger before a negotiation when motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) a negotiation partner. Participants motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) their partner expected anger to be more useful to them, and this expectation in turn, led them to try to increase their anger before negotiating. The subsequent experience of anger, following random assignment to emotion inductions (Study 1) or engagement in self-selected emotion regulation activities (Study 2), led participants to be more successful at getting others to concede to their demands, demonstrating that emotional preferences have important pragmatic implications.     

Réguler ses émotions quand on apprend,oui mais pourquoi ? Motivations à réguler ses émotions,buts émotionnels et stratégies de régulation émotionnelle mises en œuvre par des étudiants universitaires primo-arrivants en situation de préparation d’examen

Studying for the first exam period is a big challenge for freshmen students, especially because they must be able to regulate emotions emerging from this new learning situation. Indeed, it is now recognized that cognitions and emotions interact in learning and that emotion can hinder or support it. However, we argue that it is not only emotions per se but rather how students manage them in the targeted situation (i.e. their emotional regulation skills) that impacts students’ adaptation to this academic context. Using an online survey, this study explored motives in emotion regulation, emotion goals and concrete emotion regulation strategies implemented by students during the preparation of a significant course evaluation. It focuses both on “why” students engage in emotion regulation in the target situation and on “how” this regulation is implemented. A thematic content analysis, processing the data of the 235 respondents, indicates that different motivations in emotion regulation are present among students (hedonic and instrumental motivations to regulate emotions) and that these motivations can be plural among the same students. When instrumental and hedonic motivations are both reported, although the students’ discourse argues that hedonic motivation (feeling good/better) is at the service of instrumental motivation (studying the course), concrete SRE prioritize well-being, through distraction from the course, more than the study of the course (the SRE rarely supports learning). In addition, the most reported emotion regulation strategy is distraction from the course (taking a break and doing something to distract yourself from the course), even in the absence of motivational conflicts. As a result, the theoretical model of motivated regulation (Tamir, 2009; Tamir, 2015) applied to this learning situation offers an innovative reading of why and how university students attempt to manage their emotions in order to learn successfully. Although the current study approaches only the conscious side of emotion regulation, it provides an original perspective on this complex phenomenon without ignoring the context in which it emerges. Finally, this insight should help students, teachers and educational coaches to see emotion regulation as necessary for learning and to set up pedagogical and coaching practices that support the development of SRE, adapted to the learning situation and linked to the emotional states that students wish to experiment in order to optimize learning.     

Business or pleasure? Utilitarian versus hedonic considerations in emotion regulation

It is widely accepted that emotions have utilitarian as well as hedonic consequences. Nevertheless, it is typically assumed that individuals regulate emotions to obtain hedonic, rather than utilitarian, benefits. In this study, the authors tested whether individuals represent the utility of pleasant and unpleasant emotions and whether they would be motivated to experience unpleasant emotions if they believed they could be useful. First, findings revealed that participants explicitly viewed approach emotions (e.g., excitement) as useful for obtaining rewards, but viewed avoidance emotions (e.g., worry) as useful for avoiding threats. Second, this pattern was replicated in implicit representations of emotional utility, which were dissociated from explicit ones. Third, implicit, but not explicit, representations of emotional utility predicted motives for emotion regulation. When anticipating a threatening task, participants who viewed emotions such as worry and fear as useful for avoiding threats preferred to engage in activities that were likely to increase worry and fear (vs. excitement) before the task. These findings demonstrate that utilitarian considerations play an important, if underappreciated, role in emotion regulation.     

Emotion regulation strategy selection in daily life: The role of social context and goals

Recent studies have begun to document the diversity of ways people regulate their emotions. However, one unanswered question is why people regulate their emotions as they do in everyday life. In the present research, we examined how social context and goals influence strategy selection in daily high points and low points. As expected, suppression was particularly tied to social features of context: it was used more when others were present, especially non-close partners, and when people had instrumental goals, especially more interpersonal ones (e.g., avoid conflict). Distraction and reappraisal were used more when regulating for hedonic reasons (e.g., to feel better), but these strategies were also linked to certain instrumental goals (e.g., getting work done). When contra-hedonic regulation occurred, it primarily took the form of dampening positive emotion during high points. Suppression was more likely to be used for contra-hedonic regulation, whereas reappraisal and distraction were used more for pro-hedonic regulation. Overall, these findings highlight the social nature of emotion regulation and underscore the importance of examining regulation in both positive and negative contexts.     

Evidence for utilitarian motives in emotion regulation

This investigation demonstrates that emotion regulation can be driven by considerations of utility per se. We show that as participants prepared for a negotiation, those who were motivated to confront (vs. collaborate with) another person believed that anger would be more useful to them. However, only participants who were motivated to confront another and expected to receive a monetary reward for their performance (i.e., high utility), were motivated to increase their anger in preparation for the negotiation. Participants who were motivated to confront another but did not expect their performance to be rewarded (i.e., low utility), did not try to increase their anger, even though they expected anger to be useful in the negotiation. Such patterns demonstrate that people are motivated to experience even unpleasant emotions to maximise utility.     

情绪调节目标的分类与优化

摘要：情绪调节目标决定人们是否调节情绪以及怎样调节情绪。基于情绪调节服务功能的类型差异,可分离出以下类型的调节目标：增加积极体验可满足享乐性需要,社会事务需使用情绪的工具效用,复杂体验的融合可优化自我成长,而情绪体验的文化精致可促进自我与世界的融合。这些目标既可能相互一致,也存在多种冲突,对幸福体验产生综合影响。拓展积极情绪最大化的暂时性适应角色,理解内隐层面的心理因素和文化价值正当性对调节目标的制约,是未来研究的方向。     

Automatic emotion regulation during anger provocation

Individuals frequently have to regulate their emotions, especially negative ones, to function successfully. However, deliberate emotion regulation can have significant costs for the individual. Are there less costly ways to achieve emotion regulatory goals? In two studies, we test the hypothesis that more automatic types of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of deliberate emotion regulation without the costs. Study 1 introduces a priming technique that manipulates automatic emotion regulation. Using this priming technique, we show that relative to priming emotion expression, priming emotion control leads to less anger experience in response to a laboratory anger provocation. Study 2 examines the experiential and physiological consequences of automatic emotion regulation. Results suggest that relative to priming emotion expression, priming emotion control reduces negative emotion experience without maladaptive cardiovascular responding. Together, these findings suggest that automatic emotion regulation may provide an effective means of controlling powerful negative emotions.     

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.     

Escaping affect: how motivated emotion regulation creates insensitivity to mass suffering

As the number of people in need of help increases, the degree of compassion people feel for them ironically tends to decrease. This phenomenon is termed the collapse of compassion. Some researchers have suggested that this effect happens because emotions are not triggered by aggregates. We provide evidence for an alternative account. People expect the needs of large groups to be potentially overwhelming, and, as a result, they engage in emotion regulation to prevent themselves from experiencing overwhelming levels of emotion. Because groups are more likely than individuals to elicit emotion regulation, people feel less for groups than for individuals. In Experiment 1, participants displayed the collapse of compassion only when they expected to be asked to donate money to the victims. This suggests that the effect is motivated by self-interest. Experiment 2 showed that the collapse of compassion emerged only for people who were skilled at emotion regulation. In Experiment 3, we manipulated emotion regulation. Participants who were told to down-regulate their emotions showed the collapse of compassion, but participants who were told to experience their emotions did not. We examined the time course of these effects using a dynamic rating to measure affective responses in real time. The time course data suggested that participants regulate emotion toward groups proactively, by preventing themselves from ever experiencing as much emotion toward groups as toward individuals. These findings provide initial evidence that motivated emotion regulation drives insensitivity to mass suffering.     

Why Reject Creative Ideas? Fear as a Driver of Implicit Bias Against Creativity

Biases against creativity seem to be activated when people are motivated to reduce uncertainty. Drawing on the appraisal model of emotion, this study tested whether and how emotions with varying levels of uncertainty appraisals affect biases against creativity. This experimental study showed that fear, characterized by a high-uncertainty appraisal, promoted implicit, but not explicit, biases against creativity more strongly than low-uncertainty emotions such as anger and happiness. Compared with individuals who experienced anger and happiness, those who experienced fear provided lower creativity ratings because of their implicit biases against creativity. These results highlight the importance of considering emotions to understand the individuals’ biases against creativity and their recognition of creative ideas.     

Multiplicity of Emotions in Moral Judgment and Motivation

Multiple moral emotions were examined from a dynamic motivational framework through two hypothetical dilemmas that originate from the cognitive-developmental research program in morality. A questionnaire based on recognition task measurement of moral motivation and emotions was administered to 546 college students. As part of the dynamic complexity of moral motivation, intrapersonal operation of multiple emotions were expected and found toward each emotion target in each judgment context. Compassion and distress were among the most important moral emotions. Relatively strong degrees of anger and hate were reported toward the victimizers in ways that distinguished judgment choices. Participants distinguished a variety of positive emotions from anger and hate through differential associations with judgment choices. The study revealed orderly patterns of variability in the multiplicity of moral emotional experience based on relations with specific emotion targets, judgment choices, and developmental quality of moral motivation. The overall developmental quality of moral motivation was negatively associated with hate and positively associated with anger toward the victimizers. Emotional awareness was also found to be positively related to the developmental quality of moral motivation. Exploring the intrapersonal multiplicity of moral emotional experience has important implications for understanding the complexity of moral decision making and motivation.     

个体对他人的权力感知与情绪体验

他人不同的权力水平会引发个体不同的权力感知,带来不同的情绪体验。以往关于权力与情绪的研究多关注的是个体自身作为权力目标时的情况,而研究通过两个实验来探究个体对他人的权力感知与情绪体验之间的关系。实验一采用回忆法,从情绪效价和趋近/回避动机的角度分析个体唤起的情绪反应,发现个体在与不同水平的权力目标交互过程中均表现出了明显的混合情绪,且相比于远距离的高权力目标,个体与近距离的权力目标进行交互时容易产生更多的积极情绪和趋近动机倾向; 实验二通过观看视频的方式启动被试的混合情绪,发现以积极情绪为主的混合情绪的唤起会影响个体对他人的权力感知,具体表现为对一定社会距离内的权力目标表现出更高水平的权力感知。     

Together we cry: Social motives and preferences for group-based sadness

Group-based emotions play an important role in helping people feel that they belong to their group. People are motivated to belong, but does this mean that they actively try to experience group-based emotions to increase their sense of belonging? In this investigation, we propose that people may be motivated to experience even group-based emotions that are typically considered unpleasant to satisfy their need to belong. To test this hypothesis, we examined people's preferences for group-based sadness in the context of the Israeli National Memorial Day. In two correlational (Studies 1a and 1b) and two experimental (Studies 2 and 3) studies, we demonstrate that people with a stronger need to belong have a stronger preference to experience group-based sadness. This effect was mediated by the expectation that experiencing sadness would be socially beneficial (Studies 1 and 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for understanding motivated emotion regulation and intergroup relations.     

How to bite your tongue without blowing your top: implicit evaluation of emotion regulation predicts affective responding to anger provocation

People frequently have to control their emotions to function in life. However, mounting evidence suggests that deliberate emotion regulation often is costly. This presents a dilemma: Is it better to let emotions go or to pay the price of exerting costly control? In two studies, the authors explore whether emotion regulatory processes associated with implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation might provide the benefits of successful emotion regulation without the costs. In Study 1, the authors introduce a measure of implicit evaluation of emotion regulation (ER-IAT). Study 2 examined whether this measure is associated with actual emotional responses to an anger provocation. It was found that greater ER-IAT scores were associated with lesser anger experience, fewer negative thoughts, lessened self-reported effortful emotion regulation, and an adaptive pattern of cardiovascular responding. These findings suggest that implicit positive evaluation of emotion regulation is associated with successful, automatic, and physiologically adaptive down-regulation of anger.     

Don't worry, be happy? Neuroticism, trait-consistent affect regulation, and performance

People regulate their affect either to feel good or to achieve instrumental success. The present experiments show that when driven by performance goals, people can be motivated to experience unpleasant affect when it is trait-consistent, because of its instrumental benefits (e.g., M. Tamir & M. D. Robinson, 2004). In 4 studies, individuals high in neuroticism were more likely than those low in neuroticism to choose to increase their level of worry, as indicated by self-reported preferences (Study 1) and by behavioral choices in experimental settings (Studies 2-4). As predicted, such preferences were evident when expecting to perform demanding tasks but not when expecting an undemanding task (Study 2). Study 4 suggests that such preferences for short-term unpleasant affect may be beneficial to performance.     

Antisocial Behavior,Moral Disengagement,Empathy and Negative Emotion: A Comparison Between Disabled and Able-Bodied Athletes

Theories of morality suggest that negative emotions associated with antisocial behavior should diminish motivation for such behavior. Two reasons that have been proposed to explain why some individuals repeatedly harm others are that (a) they use mechanisms of moral disengagement to justify their actions, and (b) they may not empathize with and vicariously experience the negative emotions felt by their victims. With the aim of testing these proposals, the present study compared spinal cord injured disabled athletes and able-bodied athletes to determine the effect of reduced visceral afferent feedback caused by spinal cord injury on antisocial behavior, moral disengagement, empathy, and negative emotion (i.e., anger, anxiety, and dejection). Disabled athletes reported less frequent antisocial behavior and lower moral disengagement than able-bodied athletes. Group differences in antisocial behavior were mediated by differences in moral disengagement. The two groups did not differ in empathy or negative emotion. The findings of this study suggest that antisocial behavior may be regulated by mechanisms of moral disengagement.     

Is energy expenditure in emotion regulation dependent on individual differences and the specific emotion in question?

This study tested the hypothesis that the degree of self-control exerted in suppressing emotions would depend on the combination of personality (independence and dutifulness/self-discipline) and the specific type of emotion being suppressed (anger vs. appreciation). In a between-subjects design, 245 college students were induced to experience either anger or appreciation and were then instructed to suppress their emotional expression. Self-control strength was measured using a handgrip task. Exertion of self-control strength over two time points was differentially associated with levels of independence and dutifulness/self-discipline (conscientiousness) and emotion suppression condition. Specifically, individuals higher in dutifulness/self-discipline had a harder time if they were suppressing appreciation than if they were suppressing anger at others, whereas individuals higher in independence had a harder time if they were suppressing anger at others than if they were suppressing appreciation. Implications for understanding personality, self-control, and emotion regulation are discussed.     

The interpersonal effects of emotions in negotiations: a motivated information processing approach

Three experiments tested a motivated information processing account of the interpersonal effects of anger and happiness in negotiations. In Experiment 1, participants received information about the opponent's emotion (anger, happiness, or none) in a computer-mediated negotiation. As predicted, they conceded more to an angry opponent than to a happy one (controls falling in between), but only when they had a low (rather than a high) need for cognitive closure. Experiment 2 similarly showed that participants were only affected by the other's emotion under low rather than high time pressure, because time pressure reduced their degree of information processing. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that negotiators were only influenced by their opponent's emotion if they had low (rather than high) power. These results support the motivated information processing model by showing that negotiators are only affected by their opponent's emotions if they are motivated to consider them.