Reappraising negative emotions reduces distress during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In two studies, we examined the utility of intrinsic (i.e., self) versus extrinsic (i.e., other) reappraisal training for distress reduction during two consecutive COVID-19 lockdowns in Israel. In both Study 1 (n = 104) and Study 2 (n = 181), participants practiced the use of reappraisal for eight sessions across three weeks. Participants were trained to reappraise either a personal event (self-reappraisal group) or an incident presumably written by another participant (other-reappraisal group). Study 2 also included an untrained control group. Outcome measures were daily negative mood and psychological distress immediately at post-training and at a two-month follow-up. The results demonstrate a benefit for training compared to no training in lowering immediate post-training distress and daily negative emotions. However, this advantage disappeared at the two-month follow-up. In both studies, intrinsic reappraisal was associated with lower post-training distress than extrinsic reappraisal. Findings suggest reappraising negative experiences may lower distress at times of major contextual stress. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12144-022-03642-6.

Reducing attention bias in spider fear by manipulating expectancies.

The present series of studies examines the causal interaction between expectancy and attention biases in spider fear. Previous studies found that a-priori expectancy does not affect attention bias toward spiders, as measured by detection of spider targets in a subsequent visual search array compared to detection of bird targets (i.e. neutral targets) that appeared equally often. In the present series of studies, target frequency was manipulated. Targets were preceded by a verbal cue stating the likelihood that a certain target would appear. The aim was to examine whether manipulation of expectancies toward either target affects attention bias. In Experiment 1, birds appeared more frequently than spiders. Among a representative sample of the student population, attention bias toward spiders was significantly reduced. Experiment 2 replicated these results with both low- and high-fearful participants. In Experiment 3, spiders appeared more frequently than birds. Attention bias was reduced among low- and high-fearful groups, but not as strongly as the reduction in Experiments 1 and 2. These results suggest that target salience plays a role in attention bias, in competition with expectancy. To our knowledge, this is the first study to show that varying expectancy can reduce attention bias, most importantly in high fear.