The impact of empathy and reappraisal on emotional intensity recognition

Empathy represents a fundamental ability that allows for the creation and cultivation of social bonds. As part of the empathic process, individuals use their own emotional state to interpret the content and intensity of other people’s emotions. Therefore, the current study was designed to test two hypotheses: (1) empathy for the pain of another will result in biased emotional intensity judgment; and (2) changing one’s emotion via emotion regulation will modulate these biased judgments. To test these hypotheses, in experiment one we used a modified version of a well-known task that triggers an empathic reaction We found that empathy resulted in biased emotional intensity judgment. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a bias in the recognition of emotional facial expressions as a function of empathy for pain. In experiment two, we replicated these findings in an independent sample, and further found that this biased emotional intensity judgment can be moderated via reappraisal. Taken together, our findings suggest that the novel task used here can be employed to further explore the relation between emotion regulation and empathy.     

The effect of cognitive reappraisal on long‐term emotional experience and emotional memory

One's ability to properly regulate emotion is critical to psychological and physical well‐being. Among various strategies to regulate emotion, cognitive reappraisal has been shown to modulate both emotional experience and emotional memory. However, most studies of reappraisal have focused on reappraisal of negative situations, with reappraisal of positive emotion receiving considerably less attention. In addition, the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions to stimuli are typically only assessed either immediately or after a short delay, and it remains unclear whether reappraisal effects persist over longer time periods. We investigated the effect of cognitive reappraisal on emotional reactions and long‐term episodic memory for positive and negative stimuli. Men and women viewed emotionally negative, positive, and neutral pictures while they were instructed to either increase, decrease, or maintain the initial emotional reactions elicited by the pictures. Subjective ratings of emotional valence and arousal were assessed during the regulation task and again after 1 week. Memory for the pictures was assessed with free recall. Results indicated that pictures accompanied by instructions to increase emotion were better recalled than pictures reappraised to decrease emotion. Modulation of emotional arousal elicited by stimuli persisted over a week, but this effect was observed only for men. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal can have long‐lasting effects on emotional reactions to stimuli. However, the sex differences observed for the effects of reappraisal on emotional reactions highlight the importance of considering individual differences in the effects of regulation.     

社交焦虑大学生情绪调节灵活性：情绪内容对策略选择和使用的影响

尽管社交焦虑个体被认为存在情绪调节灵活性的不足,但至今尚不清楚这种不足究竟在于难以灵活选择策略,还是难以灵活使用策略,抑或二者兼有？对此,本研究采用情绪调节策略选择任务考察了37名高社交焦虑大学生和29名低社交焦虑大学生在面对社交-非社交情绪图片时对认知重评-回避策略的选择模式和使用效果。结果发现：在面对社交情绪图片时,高社交焦虑被试比低社交焦虑被试更少选择认知重评,而更多选择回避;在面对非社交情绪图片时,两组被试对两种策略的选择模式无显著差异。同时,无论面对社交还是非社交情绪图片,两组被试对两种策略的使用效果也无显著差异。以上结果表明,相比低社交焦虑个体,高社交焦虑个体只有在面对社交情绪刺激时才存在情绪调节灵活性的不足,且这种不足主要在于难以灵活选择策略,而非难以灵活使用策略。     

Divergent effects of instructed and reported emotion regulation strategies on children’s memory for emotional information

ABSTRACT

Distraction can reduce adults’ memory for emotion-eliciting information, whereas reappraisal can preserve or enhance it. Yet, when given instructions to use specific emotion regulation (ER) strategies, adults report using other strategies too. The consequences of non-instructed strategy use within instructed ER paradigms are rarely examined. We investigated how both instructed and non-instructed but reported strategies related to memory for emotional information in childhood. Older (N?=?69; 8- to 10-year-olds; 24 girls) and younger (N?=?65; 5- to 7-year-olds; 35 girls) children received instructions to use cognitive distraction, reappraisal, or do nothing (control) before and after viewing a negative emotional film clip. Children were later interviewed about what they remembered about the film, and reported the ER strategies they used during it. Memory did not vary across instructed ER strategy conditions, and reported strategies did not relate to memory differently for older and younger children. Consistent with adult work, reported cognitive distraction related to poorer memory. Different reappraisal types were reported, but only situation-focused reappraisal was linked to better memory. In sum, children’s reported cognitive distraction and reappraisal strategies related to memory for emotional information differently. Thus, ER strategies divergently relate to what children remember about their emotional experiences.     

对恐怖情绪的调节：认知重评优于表达抑制 ——一样ERP研究

摘要 本研究采用事件相关电位（ERP）技术,通过测量由视觉诱发的脑电成分晚正波（LPP）来比较情绪调节策略在生理电特征上的差异,进一步探讨认知重评和表达抑制的优劣。实验结果表明：（1）从波幅的角度来比较：在400-600ms时间窗口内,认知重评条件下恐怖图片诱发的LPP波幅显著小于在自由观看条件下的波幅,而表达抑制和自由观看组所诱发的LPP波幅差异较小。（2）从时间进程的角度来比较：认知重评与自由观看组的差异发生在400ms并持续到600ms,甚至以后;而表达抑制和自由观看之间的差异发生在450ms但是只持续到550ms。这表明认知重评相较于表达抑制,对负性情绪起调节作用开始较早,并且持续时间较长。这为认知重评优于表达抑制策略提供了神经生理学上的证据。     

记忆活动中情绪调节的效果和认知神经机制

情绪对记忆的促进作用, 已得到了大量研究的证实。但是, 情绪对记忆的损害作用还没有得到一致的研究结果。情绪诱导的记忆损害的条件和机制还没有得到很好的确认和解释。并且, 在证实了情绪对记忆的影响之后, 一个更具有现实意义的问题是, 人类能够在多大程度上调控情绪对记忆的影响呢？虽然已有的情绪调节研究对一些重要的情绪调节策略如认知重评和抑制进行了较多的探讨, 考察了情绪调节对情绪事件记忆的影响。但是, 关于情绪调节是否可以有效地调整情绪唤醒对中性项目记忆的影响, 目前只有少量的研究。对情绪调节影响记忆的认知神经机制还所知甚少。因此, 本项目拟综合使用行为测量和认知神经科学技术, 在考察情绪唤醒对记忆的损害效应的条件和机制的基础上, 进一步探讨认知重评、抑制和忽视等情绪调节策略调控记忆中的情绪效应的有效性和认知神经机制。研究结果将会有助于对情绪、情绪调节和记忆的关系的理解, 并对促进学生的学习记忆活动有现实意义。     

情绪调节中的认知重评创造力

情绪调节能力是维护个体心理健康和生活幸福的基本能力。认知重评创造力是个体面对负性情境时能够自发产生多种认知重评策略的能力,是情绪调节任务中的创造性行为。研究表明,认知重评创造力与发散性思维和开放性正相关,与神经质、特质愤怒无关;创造性的认知重评策略或运用隐喻和类比的高水平认知重构更有利于负性情绪的调节;创造性的认知重评可以通过基于杏仁核的显著情绪唤醒,基于海马的新联想形成和基于纹状体的精神奖赏的中介来调节情绪,从而产生可以保存在长时记忆中的新颖的、积极的情绪体验。上述结果支持认知重评的创造性重构理论。认知重评创造过程需要自上而下的认知控制和情绪表征的特定执行功能。未来研究可以扩大被试群体,完善认知重评创造力的测量方法,探索影响认知重评创造力的情境因素和内在因素,以及进一步揭示认知重评创造力区别于传统创造力的特别加工或反应机制的神经机制。     

Gross情绪调节过程与策略研究述评

Gross提出情绪调节产生于情绪发生的过程之中。在情绪发生过程中的情绪调节主要有选择情景、修正情景、注意分配、认知改变、反应调整等五个方面。选择情景、修正情景、注意分配、认知改变是在情绪反应趋势形成之前进行,属于先行关注情绪调节;反应调整是在情绪反应趋势形成之后进行,属于反应关注情绪调节。在情绪调节过程中,有两种普遍的具体策略：认知重评与表达抑制。这两种不同情绪调节策略对情感、认知与社会行为产生不同的影响。     

Distraction and reappraisal efficiency on immediate negative emotional responses: role of trait anxiety

Background and Objectives: Emotion regulation involves attempts to influence emotion unfolding and may target experiential, expressive and physiological responses. Several strategies can be used, such as reappraisal (re-evaluating the emotional situation to reduce its emotional meaning) or distraction (turning the attention toward non-emotional aspects of the situation). Previous research on these regulation strategies produced contrasting results regarding their efficiency and we hypothesize that this could be due to individual differences such as trait anxiety.

Design and Methods: Participants (N?=?77) were confronted with negative pictures and we examined the differential emotional reactivity according to trait anxiety, followed by a comparison of the efficiency of reappraisal and distraction in reducing emotional responses.

Results: Results show that trait anxiety has no impact on reactivity at the experiential and expressive levels, but has an impact at the physiological level, where high anxiety individuals show increased cardiac orienting effect, as well as higher skin conductance and respiratory rate. Regarding regulation, reappraisal and distraction successfully reduce emotional experience and expressivity, but not physiological arousal.

Conclusions: Such contrasting results involve that high trait anxiety individuals might benefit from the use of other kinds of strategies than reappraisal and distraction, some that may successfully target physiological responses.     

A pathway from neuroticism to depression: examining the role of emotion regulation

We examined whether the relation between neuroticism and the severity of depressive symptoms is mediated by emotion regulation. At the same time, we examined whether the type of emotion regulation strategy (maladaptive vs. adaptive) moderates the effects of neuroticism on depression severity. Community participants (N =?533; 235 women and 298 men) completed a set of questionnaires over the Internet. We used structural equation modeling to examine the mediational role of emotion regulation in linking neuroticism and the levels of depressive symptoms. The well-documented relation between neuroticism and depression is mediated by individual differences in the use of different emotion regulation strategies. More specifically, the use of maladaptive forms of emotion regulation, but not reappraisal, fully mediated the association between neuroticism and the severity of depressive symptoms.     

对条件化恐惧反应的抑制效应:指导性与习惯性情绪调节的作用

为了考察实验室指导性与个体习惯性情绪调控策略对恐惧反应的影响,先使用问卷调查了81名大学生的习惯性重评与抑制水平,随后将被试分为两组,指导其在条件化恐惧习得过程中进行主动的情绪调节或自然观看,24h后进行恐惧的表达测试。结果发现,习惯性抑制水平与恐惧习得及表达水平呈显著负相关,且指导性情绪调节与习惯性抑制均显著降低了恐惧习得及表达水平。这提示指导性与习惯性情绪调节策略均能够削弱应激的伤害以保护个体。     

威胁对创造力的影响：认知与情绪双加工路径

威胁对创造力的影响颇具热点性与争议性, 总体来看, 当前存在威胁对创造力的阻碍、促进以及两者间呈倒U型关系三种观点。但三种观点分歧的原因与内在机制尚不清楚。本文从认知与情绪角度对相关研究进行了梳理, 认为以上分歧来自于威胁等级的不同, 创造力机制的差异及相关的中介/调节变量。未来研究可从认知与情绪干预的角度, 系统验证观点分歧的原因, 深入分析威胁与创造力的认知神经和基因等内在机制。     

Successful emotion regulation requires both conviction and skill: beliefs about the controllability of emotions,reappraisal, and regulation success

To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy – namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation.     

Curiosity about a positive or negative event prolongs the duration of emotional experience

Some researchers claim that uncertainty prolongs the duration of emotional experiences because uncertainty toward an emotion-eliciting event prolongs attention to that event. However, some results contradict this claim. We assumed that curiosity rather than uncertainty prolongs the duration of emotional experience via attention, and that attention and emotional experience are prolonged only when uncertainty elicits curiosity. This assumption is based on the information gap theory, which proposes that curiosity increases with uncertainty, but that curiosity decreases at a certain level of uncertainty. We conducted a survey study to investigate the relationships among curiosity, uncertainty, attention and duration of positive and negative emotional experiences. The results showed that curiosity, but not uncertainty, prolonged the duration of emotional experiences and the process was completely mediated by attention both for positive and negative emotions. Moreover, uncertainty prolonged the duration of emotional experiences only when uncertainty elicited curiosity, which in turn prolonged attention to the emotion-eliciting event.     

青少年与成人不同情绪刺激调节效应的差异

旨在探究增强调节和减弱调节调节效应量的年龄差异。通过两个实验系统考察青少年和成人对不同情绪刺激使用不同调节策略时,调节效应的差异。实验一采用“情绪反应性—调节图片任务（REAR-I Task）”考察了35名青少年和35名成人情绪调节的效应量。实验二进一步对情绪图片的唤醒度进行分组（高唤醒/低唤醒）,考察了59名青少年和59名成人情绪调节的效应量。结果验证了研究假设：整体而言,对不同效价和唤醒度情绪刺激采用增强调节或减弱调节时,成人的调节效应量均大于青少年,对正性情绪的减弱调节方面尤为明显。     

The other side of rumination: reflective pondering as a strategy for regulating emotions in social situations

Recent studies have questioned the idea of rumination as a unitary dysfunctional process and identified an adaptive subcomponent: reflective pondering. We tested whether reflective pondering could represent an adaptive strategy of regulating emotions, and contrasted it with reappraisal and acceptance, strategies linked to major psychotherapeutic approaches. Participants (103 students) received training in one of these and were exposed to a negative mood induction consisting of social scenarios, both in the presence and in the absence of the specific emotion regulation instruction. Acceptance was more useful than reflective pondering in impacting negative emotions and anxiety. Reappraisal was more efficient than pondering for anxiety. However, moderation analysis showed that social anxiety (SA) levels influenced the comparative efficiency of reappraisal and acceptance as contrasted to reflective pondering for negative emotions and anxiety. Participants low in SA made equal use of all strategies, while for those high in SA reappraisal and acceptance were more efficient than pondering. Our results provide preliminary evidence that reflective pondering can, in some circumstances, be an adaptive regulation strategy.     

Effects of incidental positive emotion and cognitive reappraisal on affective responses to negative stimuli

Previous studies have identified two powerful ways to regulate emotional responses to a stressor: experiencing incidental positive emotions and using cognitive reappraisal to reframe the stressor. Several cognitive and motivational theories of positive emotion support the formulation that incidental positive emotions may facilitate cognitive reappraisal. To test the separate and interacting effects of positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal, we first adapted an established picture-based reappraisal paradigm by interspersing blocks of positive emotion inducing and neutral pictures. Across two pre-registered studies (Studies 1, 2), reappraisal effectively decreased self-reported negative emotions and increased self-reported positive emotions; however, experiencing incidental positive emotions did not facilitate reappraisal success. In another preregistered study (Study 3), we employed a more powerful positive emotion induction via virtual reality (VR), used a social stress anticipation task, and instructed participants to reappraise the anticipated stressor positively. Although there was a robust effect of the positive emotion induction (relative to the neutral induction) on feeling more positive emotions throughout stress anticipation, the results again indicated that incidental positive emotions did not facilitate cognitive reappraisal. We propose that incidental positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal may constitute separate pathways of influence when regulating one's responses to negative events.     

Control of impulsive emotional behaviour through implementation intentions

Past research has established that people can strategically enhance or override impulsive emotional behaviour with implementation intentions (Eder, Rothermund, & Proctor, 2010). However, it is unclear whether emotional action tendencies change by intentional processes or by habit formation processes due to repeated enactment of the intention (or both). The present study shows that forming implementation intentions is sufficient to modulate emotional action tendencies. Participants received instructions about how to respond to positive and negative stimuli on evaluation trials but no such trials were actually presented. Results showed that merely intending to approach and avoid affective stimuli influenced emotional action tendencies in a modified affective Simon task in which affective valence was irrelevant. An affective Simon effect (i.e., faster reactions when the valence of the stimulus corresponded with the valence of the movement) was observed when participants intended evaluations with affectively congruent responses (i.e., positive–approach, negative–avoid); in contrast, the effect was reversed in direction when participants planned evaluations with incongruent responses (i.e., positive–avoid, negative–approach). Thus, implementation intentions can regulate implicit emotional responses even in the absence of possible habit formation processes. Implications for dual-system accounts of emotion regulation are discussed.     

Reappraisal Buffers the Association Between Stress and Negative Mood Measured Over 14 Days: Implications for Understanding Psychological Resilience

Reappraisal is thought to be an adaptive emotion regulation strategy, and research suggests that individuals who habitually reappraise report more positive patterns of affect overall. However, some experimental studies indicate that a greater tendency to reappraise can exacerbate stress response, and it is unclear whether reappraisal confers resilience or exacerbates response to naturally occurring stressors. In order to address this, the present study investigated whether reappraisal prospectively moderated the association between daily stressors and daily negative mood measured over 14 days. Participants (n = 236) completed a measure of reappraisal at baseline, before completing daily online entries of stress and positive and negative mood. Data were analysed using multilevel modelling. Results suggested that reappraisal moderated the association between stress and negative mood, such that higher levels of reappraisal were associated with lower levels of negative mood in response to stress. Moreover, higher reappraisal was also independently associated with lower levels of daily negative mood and higher levels of positive mood. These results suggest that higher reappraisal may confer resilience to stress. Copyright © 2016 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Effects of compassionate thinking on negative emotions

The present study compared the effect of compassionate thinking with other methods traditionally used in cognitive behavioural therapy (cognitive reappraisal, responsibility reattribution, and self-deflection). An instructional manipulation was used, and 207 undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of these thinking styles or a control condition. The results revealed that participants who engaged in compassionate thinking and cognitive reappraisal reported significantly lower levels of negative emotions compared to those in the responsibility reattribution and control conditions. Furthermore, results of hierarchical regression analyses suggested that habitual use of self-compassion reduced negative emotions in all conditions. These findings suggest that self-compassion and reappraisal reduce negative emotions more than reattribution and self-deflection.