Regulating emotions under exposure to negative out-group-related news material results in increased acceptance of out-groups

ABSTRACT

Negative emotions affect the acceptance of out-groups. Here, we investigated whether modifying negative emotions would affect perceptions of out-groups. We experimentally manipulated the use of two emotion regulation strategies: suppression of emotional expression and cognitive reappraisal, the latter involving reframing a situation to mitigate its emotional impact. Using a population-based sample (N = 317), we conducted an online randomized controlled trial. Participants regulated their emotions while reading threatening news about out-groups. Not only reappraisal, but also suppression increased immediate acceptance of out-groups. The effect of reappraisal was partly mediated by decreased disgust, suggesting unique effects of reappraisal on this emotion. In the suppression condition acceptance decreased at high levels of habitual emotion regulation, whereas reappraisal showed an opposite tendency. Previous research may have underestimated the importance of different emotion regulation strategies on prejudice, and that relatively simple interventions can affect prejudice. The findings are of interest to prejudice prevention programs.     

Should we suppress or reappraise our stress?: the moderating role of reappraisal on cortisol reactivity and recovery in healthy adults

Background: People differ in their ability to regulate their physiological stress response. Individual differences in emotion regulation strategies such as suppression and reappraisal may explain this differential response to stress.

Objective: The aim of the current study was to assess whether daily use of suppression and reappraisal as well as their interaction predicted physiological stress reactivity and/or recovery, as assessed by variations in cortisol levels.

Method: Thirty-eight healthy young adults (13 men) completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and were exposed to a psychosocial stressor, throughout which salivary cortisol was measured.

Results: Linear regressions showed main effects of reappraisal and suppression on cortisol reactivity and a main effect of suppression on cortisol recovery, where both strategies were positively associated with stress phases. Moreover, results showed a significant interaction of suppression by reappraisal in predicting both cortisol reactivity and recovery. Simple slope tests revealed that reappraisal moderated the association between suppression and both phases of cortisol responsivity.

Conclusion: Our results suggest that reappraisal represents a protective factor against the deleterious effects of suppression on stress responsivity. This study underlines the importance of investigating emotion regulation strategies as a means to understand individual differences in vulnerability to stress-related psychopathologies such as anxiety and depression.     

Weighing the evidence for a dorsal processing bias under continuous flash suppression

With the introduction of continuous flash suppression (CFS) as a method to render stimuli invisible and study unconscious visual processing, a novel hypothesis has gained popularity. It states that processes typically ascribed to the dorsal visual stream can escape CFS and remain functional, while ventral stream processes are suppressed when stimuli are invisible under CFS. This notion of a CFS-specific “dorsal processing bias” has been argued to be in line with core characteristics of the influential dual-stream hypothesis of visual processing which proposes a dissociation between dorsally mediated vision-for-action and ventrally mediated vision-for-perception. Here, we provide an overview of neuroimaging and behavioral studies that either examine this dorsal processing bias or base their conclusions on it. We show that both evidence for preserved ventral processing as well as lack of dorsal processing can be found in studies using CFS. To reconcile the diverging results, differences in the paradigms and their effects are worthy of future research. We conclude that given the current level of information a dorsal processing bias under CFS cannot be universally assumed.     

动作理解因境而异:动作加工中情境信息的自动整合

针对动作理解的机制,模拟论主张大脑自发模拟他人的动作,就相同的动作其理解也相同,而理论论则认为人们基于合理性原则对他人动作进行推理,相同的动作发生在不同的情境时会有不同的理解。但以往研究所采用动作材料的运动学特性和发生情境存在共变,其难以区分动作理解是支持模拟论还是理论论。通过两项实验,采用动画制作技术来产生有无约束情境下的追逐动作,以指示动作加工过程的脑电μ抑制为指标,对前述两种观点进行了检验。其中,在约束情境中存在障碍物,追逐者需改变运动方向以绕过障碍物,从后方逐渐趋近目标;而无约束情境中不存在障碍物,但追逐者依然保持与存在约束情景下相同的运动模式。结果发现,当追逐动作发生在存在约束的情境时,其基于合理性原则推测可获得清晰的动作目标,该条件下的μ抑制程度高于不存在约束情境的条件(实验1);而当仅追逐者运动,即趋近的目标不确定时,虽然有约束和无约束情境间的物理差异与实验1相同,但条件间μ抑制的差异消失(实验2);且上述μ抑制并非与注意相关的枕叶α活动的泛化。该结果提示,动作发生的情境信息影响人们对动作的理解,即基于推理过程理解动作,支持理论论观点。     

Exploring the boundary conditions of unconscious numerical priming effects with continuous flash suppression

The scope and limits of unconscious processing are a controversial topic of research in experimental psychology. Particularly within the visual domain, a wide range of paradigms have been used to experimentally manipulate perceptual awareness. A recent study reported unconscious numerical processing during continuous flash suppression (CFS), which is a powerful variant of interocular suppression and disrupts the conscious perception of visual stimuli for up to seconds. Since this finding of a distance-dependent priming effect contradicts earlier results showing that interocular suppression abolishes semantic processing, we sought to investigate the boundary conditions of this effect in two experiments. Using statistical analyses and experimental designs that precluded an effect of target numerosity, we found evidence for identity priming, but no conclusive evidence for distance-dependent numerical priming under CFS. Our results suggest that previous conclusions on high-level numerical priming under interocular suppression may have been premature.     

A Pilot Study of Emotion Regulation Strategies in a Psychodrama Group of Psychiatric Patients

The researcher analyzed two emotion regulation strategies in a group of adults attending psychodrama psychotherapeutic group at an outpatient psychiatric clinic. The subjects, nine men and 15 women between the ages of 19 and 63 (with 14 subjects in young and 10 in middle adulthood) self-assessed their use of reappraisal and suppression using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire at the beginning of their treatment and at its end. They use reappraisal rarely to sometimes, regardless of their age, gender, and diagnosis. In the first assessment, the participants in middle adulthood and men reported using suppression more than young adults and women. During treatment, middle-aged adults and men succeeded to decrease their use of suppression significantly more than the young adults and women.     

Selection history-driven signal suppression

ABSTRACT

The control of attention is influenced by current goals, physical salience, and selection history. Under certain conditions, physically salient stimuli can be strategically suppressed below baseline levels, facilitating visual search for a target. It is unclear whether such signal suppression is a broad mechanism of selective information processing that extends to other sources of attentional priority evoked by task-irrelevant stimuli, or whether it is particular to physically salient perceptual signals. Using eye movements, in the present study we highlight a case where a former-target-colour distractor facilitates search for a target on a large percentage of trials. Our findings provide evidence that the principle of signal suppression extends to other sources of attentional priority beyond physical salience, and that selection history can be leveraged to strategically guide attention away from a stimulus.     

Expressive suppression and financial risk taking: A mediated moderation model

This research aimed to investigate the relationship between the habitual use of expressive suppression, a type of emotion regulation strategy, and risk taking in the financial domain. It also attempted to further examine gender as a possible moderator of this relationship and to explore the anticipated emotion related to negative potential outcomes as the mechanism behind this moderated effect. Two studies were conducted for these purposes. In Study 1, a total of 657 college students completed a test battery, including both the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Grable and Lytton Risk Tolerance Scale. The results showed that expressive suppression was negatively related to financial risk taking, and gender moderated this relationship. In Study 2, 441 college students took a test battery including both the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and a financial investment allocation task. The results replicated the findings in Study 1 and indicated that the anticipated emotion related to negative potential outcomes fully mediated the moderated effect of gender in the suppression-financial risk taking association. These findings implied the importance of considering gender differences in the prediction of financial choices from the perspective of emotion regulation.