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.

Daily Stress, Coping, and Negative and Positive Affect in Depression: Complex Trigger and Maintenance Patterns.

Major depressive disorder is characterized by emotional dysfunction, but mood states in daily life are not well understood. This study examined complex explanatory models of daily stress and coping mechanisms that trigger and maintain daily negative affect and (lower) positive affect in depression. Sixty-three depressed patients completed perfectionism measures, and then completed daily questionnaires of stress appraisals, coping, and affect for 7 consecutive days. Multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) demonstrated that, across many stressors, when the typical individual with depression perceives more criticism than usual, he/she uses more avoidant coping and experiences higher event stress than usual, and this is connected to daily increases in negative affect as well as decreases in positive affect. In parallel, results showed that perceived control, less avoidant coping, and problem-focused coping commonly operate together when daily positive affect increases. MSEM also showed that avoidant coping tendencies and ongoing stress, in combination, explain why people with depression and higher self-critical perfectionism maintain daily negative affect and lower positive affect. These findings advance a richer and more detailed understanding of specific stress and coping patterns to target in order to more effectively accomplish the two predominant therapy goals of decreasing patients' distress and strengthening resilience.

Emotion regulation choice in an evaluative context: the moderating role of self-esteem.

Evaluative contexts can be stressful, but relatively little is known about how different individuals who vary in responses to self-evaluation make emotion regulatory choices to cope in these situations. To address this gap, participants who vary in self-esteem gave an impromptu speech, rated how they perceived they had performed on multiple evaluative dimensions, and subsequently chose between disengaging attention from emotional processing (distraction) and engaging with emotional processing via changing its meaning (reappraisal), while waiting to receive feedback regarding these evaluative dimensions. According to our framework, distraction can offer stronger short-term relief than reappraisal, but, distraction is costly in the long run relative to reappraisal because it does not allow learning from evaluative feedback. We predicted and found that participants with lower (but not higher) self-esteem react defensively to threat of failure by seeking short-term relief via distraction over the long-term benefit of reappraisal, as perceived failure increases. Implications for the understanding of emotion regulation and self-esteem are discussed.

White matter structure in the uncinate fasciculus: Implications for socio-affective deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have social and communication deficits and difficulties regulating emotions. The brain bases of these socio-affective deficits are not yet clear, but one candidate is structural connectivity in the left uncinate fasciculus, which connects limbic temporal and frontal areas thought to be involved in socio-affective processing. In this study, we assessed white matter structure in the left and right uncinate fasciculus in 18 high-functioning individuals with ASD and 18 group-matched typically developing (TD) controls using Diffusion Tensor Imaging. To test specificity of the associations, we also examined the association between both uncinate fasciculi and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Compared to TD individuals, individuals with ASD had significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left and right uncinate. Group status significantly moderated the association between left uncinate and socio-affective deficits, indicating that within the ASD group, FA was associated with socio-affective deficits: Individuals with ASD with lower FA in the left uncinate had significantly more social and emotion regulation deficits. There was no association with restricted and repetitive behaviors. This study provides evidence that the left uncinate may play a critical role in socio-affective skills in individuals with ASD.

Anxiety trajectories in response to a speech task in social anxiety disorder: Evidence from a randomized controlled trial of CBT.

The subjective experience of anxiety plays a central role in cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, much remains to be learned about the temporal dynamics of anxiety elicited by feared social situations. The aims of the current study were: (1) to compare anxiety trajectories during a speech task in individuals with SAD (n=135) versus healthy controls (HCs; n=47), and (2) to compare the effects of CBT on anxiety trajectories with a waitlist control condition. SAD was associated with higher levels of anxiety and greater increases in anticipatory anxiety compared to HCs, but not differential change in anxiety from pre- to post-speech. CBT was associated with decreases in anxiety from pre- to post-speech but not with changes in absolute levels of anticipatory anxiety or rates of change in anxiety during anticipation. The findings suggest that anticipatory experiences should be further incorporated into exposures.

Pre-treatment social anxiety severity moderates the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction and aerobic exercise.

UNLABELLED: We examined whether social anxiety severity at pre-treatment would moderate the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or aerobic exercise (AE) for generalized social anxiety disorder. MBSR and AE produced equivalent reductions in weekly social anxiety symptoms. Improvements were moderated by pre-treatment social anxiety severity. PRACTITIONER POINTS: Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and aerobic exercise (AE) are effective in reducing symptoms of social anxiety. Pre-treatment social anxiety severity can be used to inform treatment recommendations. Both MBSR and AE produced equivalent reductions in weekly levels of social anxiety symptoms. MBSR appears to be most effective for patients with lower pre-treatment social anxiety symptom severity. AE appears to be most effective for patients with higher pre-treatment social anxiety symptom severity.

Emotional and instrumental support provision interact to predict well-being.

Individuals in close relationships help each other in many ways, from listening to each other's problems, to making each other feel understood, to providing practical support. However, it is unclear if these supportive behaviors track each other across days and as stable tendencies in close relationships. Further, although past work suggests that giving support improves providers' well-being, the specific features of support provision that improve providers' psychological lives remain unclear. We addressed these gaps in knowledge through a daily diary study that comprehensively assessed support provision and its effects on well-being. We found that providers' emotional support (e.g., empathy) and instrumental support represent distinct dimensions of support provision, replicating prior work. Crucially, emotional support, but not instrumental support, consistently predicted provider well-being. These 2 dimensions also interacted, such that instrumental support enhanced well-being of both providers and recipients, but only when providers were emotionally engaged while providing support. These findings illuminate the nature of support provision and suggest targets for interventions to enhance well-being.

Maladaptive Behavior in Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Role of Emotion Experience and Emotion Regulation.

Maladaptive behavior is common in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the factors that give rise to maladaptive behavior in this context are not well understood. The present study examined the role of emotion experience and emotion regulation in maladaptive behavior in individuals with ASD and typically developing (TD) participants. Thirty-one individuals with ASD and 28 TD participants and their parents completed questionnaires assessing emotion experience, regulation, and maladaptive behavior. Compared to TD participants, individuals with ASD used cognitive reappraisal less frequently, which was associated with increased negative emotion experience, which in turn was related to greater levels of maladaptive behavior. By decreasing negative emotions, treatments targeting adaptive emotion regulation may therefore reduce maladaptive behaviors in individuals with ASD.

The eyes have it: the role of attention in cognitive reappraisal of social stimuli.

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is a commonly used emotion-regulation strategy that has been shown to influence affective, cognitive, and social outcomes. Although progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying CR, the role of attention remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role of attention in CR by tracking participants' gazes during the presentation of videos depicting people in negative moods. Participants were asked to attend naturally or to use reappraisal to increase or decrease their emotions while viewing the videos. After each video, they rated their negative emotion experience. Results showed that participants spent more time looking at the emotional regions in the target's face (eyes and mouth) when asked to up-regulate their emotions, compared with when they simply attended to the videos. The reverse pattern was found for down-regulation of emotions. In addition, the effects of cognitive reappraisal on negative emotion experience were mediated by the time spent looking at the emotional regions, with a stronger effect for the down-regulation instruction. Finally, direct effects of regulation instruction on negative emotion were observed even when controlling for time spent viewing emotional regions, which suggests that attention and CR are distinct components that uniquely influence negative emotions. These results complement and extend previous findings on the role of attention in CR, and highlight the importance of taking attentional mechanisms into account when designing CR training.

Fluid cognitive ability is a resource for successful emotion regulation in older and younger adults.

The Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation (SOC-ER) framework suggests that (1) emotion regulation (ER) strategies require resources and that (2) higher levels of relevant resources may increase ER success. In the current experiment, we tested the specific hypothesis that individual differences in one internal class of resources, namely cognitive ability, would contribute to greater success using cognitive reappraisal (CR), a form of ER in which one reinterprets the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations. To test this hypothesis, 60 participants (30 younger and 30 older adults) completed standardized neuropsychological tests that assess fluid and crystallized cognitive ability, as well as a CR task in which participants reinterpreted the meaning of sad pictures in order to alter (increase or decrease) their emotions. In a control condition, they viewed the pictures without trying to change how they felt. Throughout the task, we indexed subjective emotional experience (self-reported ratings of emotional intensity), expressive behavior (corrugator muscle activity), and autonomic physiology (heart rate and electrodermal activity) as measures of emotional responding. Multilevel models were constructed to explain within-subjects variation in emotional responding as a function of ER contrasts comparing increase or decrease conditions with the view control condition and between-subjects variation as a function of cognitive ability and/or age group (older, younger). As predicted, higher fluid cognitive ability-indexed by perceptual reasoning, processing speed, and working memory-was associated with greater success using reappraisal to alter emotional responding. Reappraisal success did not vary as a function of crystallized cognitive ability or age group. Collectively, our results provide support for a key tenet of the SOC-ER framework that higher levels of relevant resources may confer greater success at emotion regulation.

Advancing complex explanatory conceptualizations of daily negative and positive affect: trigger and maintenance coping action patterns.

The present study addressed a fundamental gap between research and clinical work by advancing complex explanatory conceptualizations of coping action patterns that trigger and maintain daily negative affect and (low) positive affect. One hundred ninety-six community adults completed measures of perfectionism, and then 6 months later completed questionnaires at the end of the day for 14 consecutive days to provide simultaneous assessments of appraisals, coping, and affect across different stressful situations in everyday life. Multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) supported complex explanatory conceptualizations that demonstrated (a) disengagement trigger patterns consisting of several distinct appraisals (e.g., event stress) and coping strategies (e.g., avoidant coping) that commonly operate together across many different stressors when the typical individual experiences daily increases in negative affect and drops in positive affect; and (b) disengagement maintenance patterns composed of different appraisal and coping maintenance factors that, in combination, can explain why individuals with higher levels of self-critical perfectionism have persistent daily negative affect and low positive mood 6 months later. In parallel, engagement patterns (triggers and maintenance) composed of distinct appraisals (e.g., perceived social support) and coping strategies (e.g., problem-focused coping) were linked to compensatory experiences of daily positive affect. These findings demonstrate the promise of using daily diary methodologies and MSEM to promote a shared understanding between therapists and clients of trigger and maintenance coping action patterns that explain what precipitates and perpetuates clients' difficulties, which, in turn, can help achieve the 2 overarching therapy goals of reducing clients' distress and bolstering resilience.

Inequality matters: classroom status hierarchy and adolescents' bullying.

The natural emergence of status hierarchies in adolescent peer groups has long been assumed to help prevent future intragroup aggression. However, clear evidence of this beneficial influence is lacking. In fact, few studies have examined between-group differences in the degree of status hierarchy (defined as within-group variation in individual status) and how they are related to bullying, a widespread form of aggression in schools. Data from 11,296 eighth- and ninth-graders (mean age = 14.57, 50.6 % female) from 583 classes in 71 schools were used to determine the direction of the association between classroom degree of status hierarchy and bullying behaviors, and to investigate prospective relationships between these two variables over a 6-month period. Multilevel structural equation modeling analyses showed that higher levels of classroom status hierarchy were concurrently associated with higher levels of bullying at the end of the school year. Higher hierarchy in the middle of the school year predicted higher bullying later in the year. No evidence was found to indicate that initial bullying predicted future hierarchy. These findings highlight the importance of a shared balance of power in the classroom for the prevention of bullying among adolescents.

Rise of blood pressure with periodic limb movements in sleep and wakefulness.

OBJECTIVE: To measure changes in blood pressure and pulse rate associated with periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS) in patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS). METHODS: We measured autonomic activation as indicated by a rise in blood pressure and pulse rate during periodic limb movements in sleep (PLMS) in 8 patients (6 women average age 57.6+/-16.5 yr and 2 men average age 34+/-28 yr) with RLS. The patients had overnight polysomnographic (PSG) recordings with continuous monitoring of blood pressure (BP) and heart rate (HR). The patients were asked to perform voluntary movements mimicking PLMS (Fake PLMS) which served as controls for PLMS during PSG. We analyzed 601 movements: 145 periodic limb movements in wakefulness (PLMW), 173 periodic limb movements in sleep with cortical arousal (PLMSA), 168 periodic limb movements in sleep without cortical arousal (PLMSNA) and 115 respiratory related limb movements (RRLM). RESULTS: There was a statistically significant rise in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) after PLMW (SBP 11.7+/-7.6 mm Hg), PLMSA (SBP 16.7+/-9.4 mm Hg), PLMSNA (SBP 11.2+/-8.7 mm Hg) and RRLM (SBP 18.9+/-14.9 mm Hg) which exceeded that seen with Fake PLMS (SBP 3.2+/-3.1 mm Hg) in wakefulness. There were comparable increases in heart rate that did not quite reach statistical significance. CONCLUSIONS: There is a rise in SBP, DBP and HR with PLMW, PLMSNA, PLMSA and RRLM as compared to Fake PLMS. SIGNIFICANCE: One possibility is that the concomitant rise in the blood pressure and heart rate after periodic limb movements indicating autonomic activation may have long-term adverse cardiovascular consequences. This remains to be determined in future experiments.

Thinking of critical words during study is unnecessary for false memory in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott procedure.

Do participants in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott (DRM) procedure demonstrate false memory because they think of nonpresented critical words during study and confuse them with words that were actually presented? In two experiments, 160 participants studied eight visually presented DRM lists at a rate of 2 s or 5 s per word. Half of the participants rehearsed silently: the other half rehearsed overtly. Following study, the participants' memory for the lists was tested by recall or recognition. Typical false memory results were obtained for both memory measures. More important, two new results were observed. First, a large majority of the overt-rehearsal participants spontaneously rehearsed approximately half of the critical words during study. Second, critical-word rehearsal at study enhanced subsequent false recall, but it had no effect on false recognition or remember judgments for falsely recognized critical words. Thinking of critical words during study was unnecessary for producing false memory.