Beliefs about emotion: implications for avoidance-based emotion regulation and psychological health

People’s beliefs about their ability to control their emotions predict a range of important psychological outcomes. It is not clear, however, whether these beliefs are playing a causal role, and if so, why this might be. In the current research, we tested whether avoidance-based emotion regulation explains the link between beliefs and psychological outcomes. In Study 1 (N?=?112), a perceived lack of control over emotions predicted poorer psychological health outcomes (increased self-reported avoidance, lower well-being, and higher levels of clinical symptoms), and avoidance strategies indirectly explained these links between emotion beliefs and psychological health. In Study 2 (N?=?101), we experimentally manipulated participants’ emotion beliefs by leading participants to believe that they struggled (low regulatory self-efficacy) or did not struggle (high regulatory self-efficacy) with controlling their emotions. Participants in the low regulatory self-efficacy condition reported increased intentions to engage in avoidance strategies over the next month and were more likely to avoid seeking psychological help. When asked if they would participate in follow-up studies, these participants were also more likely to display avoidance-based emotion regulation. These findings provide initial evidence for the causal role of emotion beliefs in avoidance-based emotion regulation, and document their impact on psychological health-related outcomes.     

Emotion regulation and peer-rated social functioning: A 4-year longitudinal study

Different emotion regulation strategies have been linked to distinct social outcomes, but only concurrently or in the short-term. The present research employed a 4-year longitudinal design with peer-reported measures of social functioning to examine the long-term social effects of emotion regulation. Individual differences in suppression before entering college predicted weaker social connections (e.g., less close relationships) at the end of college, whereas reappraisal predicted stronger social connections and more favorable sociometric standing (e.g., higher social status). These effects of emotion regulation remained intact even when controlling for baseline social functioning and Big Five personality traits. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of particular emotion regulation strategies have an enduring impact, shaping the individual’s social environment over time.     

Defining the boundary of childhood amnesia

When adults are asked to recall their earliest autobiographical memories most can recall nothing about their infancy and early childhood, a phenomenon commonly referred to as childhood amnesia. There is general consensus regarding the existence of childhood amnesia, but there remains considerable debate over its boundary. Most researchers have argued that the boundary of childhood amnesia occurs between the ages of 3 and 4 years, but in 1993 Usher and Neisser published a highly influential paper, which has subsequently been used to argue that the boundary may be as low as 2 years. In the present experiment we examined how changes in scoring criteria influence our estimates of the age of adults’ earliest memories. We conclude that some coding criteria are more valid than others and that the best estimates of childhood amnesia will include measures of free recall in addition to the specific questions that have dominated prior research in this area.     

Self-compassion and social anxiety disorder

Abstract

Self-compassion refers to having an accepting and caring orientation towards oneself. Although self-compassion has been studied primarily in healthy populations, one particularly compelling clinical context in which to examine self-compassion is social anxiety disorder (SAD). SAD is characterized by high levels of negative self-criticism as well as an abiding concern about others’ evaluation of one's performance. In the present study, we tested the hypotheses that: (1) people with SAD would demonstrate less self-compassion than healthy controls (HCs), (2) self-compassion would relate to severity of social anxiety and fear of evaluation among people with SAD, and (3) age would be negatively correlated with self-compassion for people with SAD, but not for HC. As expected, people with SAD reported less self-compassion than HCs on the Self-Compassion Scale and its subscales. Within the SAD group, lesser self-compassion was not generally associated with severity of social anxiety, but it was associated with greater fear of both negative and positive evaluation. Age was negatively correlated with self-compassion for people with SAD, whereas age was positively correlated with self-compassion for HC. These findings suggest that self-compassion may be a particularly important target for assessment and treatment in persons with SAD.     

Conflict escalation and coping with workplace bullying: A replication and extension

Bullying or mobbing is used for systematically harassing a person for a long time. In the context of stress theory, bullying is a severe form of social stressors at work, whereas in terms of conflict theory, bullying signifies an unsolved social conflict having reached a high level of escalation and an increased imbalance of power. Based on a qualitative study with 20 semi-structured interviews with victims of bullying and a quantitative questionnaire study with a total of 149 victims of bullying and a control group (N = 81), it was investigated whether bullying victims use specific conflict management strategies more often compared with individuals who are not bullied, and whether coping strategies used by successful copers with bullying differ from those of the unsuccessful copers. Successful copers were those victims who believe that their situation at work has improved again as a result of their coping efforts. The qualitative data showed that most victims started with constructive conflict-solving strategies, changed their strategies several times, and finally tried to leave the organization. In the interviews, the victims of bullying most often recommended others in the same situation to leave the organization and to seek social support. They more often showed conflict avoidance in the quantitative study. Successful victims fought back with similar means less often, and less often used negative behaviour such as frequent absenteeism. Moreover, they obviously were better at recognizing and avoiding escalating behaviour, whereas in their fight for justice, the unsuccessful victims often contributed to the escalation of the bullying conflict.     

Role of Religious Attendance and Identity Conflict in Psychological Well-being

A sample of individuals who identified as gay or lesbian were administered measures of church attendance, their religious organization’s view of homosexuality, perceived conflict between religious faith identity and sexual orientation identity, social support, depression, and generalized anxiety. Among participants who rated their church as rejecting of homosexuality, greater frequency of attendance was related to a higher incidence of GAD symptoms, but not depression. No correlation was found for those attending accepting faith communities. Those who attend rejecting faith communities attended services less often, experienced greater identity conflict, and reported significantly less social support than those of the Accepted group. Regression analyses indicated that identity conflict and social support did not fully account for the relationship between attendance and GAD symptoms. Overall, findings from the current study support previous suggestions that participation in conservative or rejecting religious communities may adversely affect the emotional well-being of GL individuals.     

The Orsino complex: Men who love themselves as love objects

Abstract

The Duke Orsino, in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, is cited as the archetypal embodiment of a psychological complex which, it is argued, may affect many men in modern patriarchal societies. This condition named the ‘Orsino complex’ is characterized by the subject's experience of being in love with himself as a love object. It is the consequence of the subject's very early experience of his mother's dual psychological reactions to him as a male child. The first of these, and the more significant, I have called maternal phallic projection, while the second I term maternal withdrawal. I also consider the influence of the father upon this complex.

While this paper remains speculative in its present form—that is, its central thesis is based on fictional and not on clinical material—it might, I hope, assist all of us working psychodynamically in understanding further some of the severe problems that male clients present in their relationships with women, as well as directing further research into the complexities of gender identity in contemporary society.     

Why are Extraverts more Satisfied? Personality,Social Experiences,and Subjective Well‐being in College

It is widely appreciated that extraversion is associated with greater subjective well‐being. What is not yet clear is what mechanisms relate the two. In two longitudinal studies, we explored whether extraversion is prospectively associated with higher levels of satisfaction during college through influencing college social experiences using longitudinal cross‐lagged mediation models. In both studies, students' extraversion at the beginning of college predicted their subjective well‐being 4 years later. In both studies, extraversion at the beginning of college predicted a variety of self‐reported and peer‐reported social experiences (e.g. feelings of belonging and size of social network). We tested whether qualitative or quantitative aspects of social experiences explained the association between extraversion and subjective well‐being. In the first study, neither type of social experience explained the effect of extraversion on satisfaction. Only qualitative social experiences in the second study were instrumental in explaining this effect. The results suggest that extraversion's ability to create better social experiences can play a role in extraverts' greater subjective well‐being, but these experiences are not the only reason extraverts are happier and more satisfied. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology     

The organization of narrative discourse in Lewy body spectrum disorder

Narrative discourse is an essential component of day-to-day communication, but little is known about narrative in Lewy body spectrum disorder (LBSD), including Parkinson’s disease (PD), Parkinson’s disease with dementia (PDD), and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). We performed a detailed analysis of a semi-structured speech sample in 32 non-aphasic patients with LBSD, and we related their narrative impairments to gray matter (GM) atrophy using voxel-based morphometry. We found that patients with PDD and DLB have significant difficulty organizing their narrative speech. This was correlated with deficits on measures of executive functioning and speech fluency. Regression analyses associated this deficit with reduced cortical volume in inferior frontal and anterior cingulate regions. These findings are consistent with a model of narrative discourse that includes executive as well as language components and with an impairment of the organizational component of narrative discourse in patients with PDD and DLB.