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Because of the central involvement of emotion regulation in psychological health and the role that implicit (largely unconscious) processes appear to play in emotion regulation, implicit emotion-regulatory processes should play a vital role in psychological health. We hypothesised that implicitly valuing emotion regulation translates into better psychological health in individuals who use adaptive emotion-regulation strategies. A community sample of 222 individuals (56% women) who had recently experienced a stressful life event completed an implicit measure of emotion regulation valuing (ER-IAT) and reported on their habitual use of an important adaptive emotion-regulation strategy: cognitive reappraisal. We measured three domains of psychological health: well-being, depressive symptoms, and social adjustment. As hypothesised, individuals who implicitly valued emotion regulation exhibited greater levels of psychological health, but only when they were high in cognitive reappraisal use. These findings suggest that salutary effects of unconscious emotion-regulation processes depend on its interplay with conscious emotion-regulation processes.

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Several studies have revealed that women report stronger feelings of disgust than men ( Gross & Levenson, 1995 ; Schienle, Schäfer, Stark, Walter, & Vaitl, 2005 ). However, the extent to which this gender difference also influences physiological disgust responses remains an open question. In Experiment 1, 54 female and 41 male participants were exposed to slides of different disgust-content. In Experiment 2, 47 women and 53 men watched two film clips showing hygiene-related or food-related disgust stimuli, respectively. Differences between males and females in reported and physiological disgust responses (heart rate, electrodermal activity, salivary cortisol, secretory immunoglobulin A) were tested by analysis of variance. Replicating previous studies, women reported stronger feelings of disgust than men across all disgust inductions. Additionally, in Study 1, women showed a higher increase in skin conductance level than men. In conclusion, gender moderates subjective responses to disgust, whereas physiological disgust responses are only marginally moderated by gender. Gender stereotypes as an explanation for the results are discussed.

High cardiac vagal control (as measured by respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) is associated with lower depression. Recent theories argue that people’s responsiveness to social resources is a key mechanism in this association. This argument implies two hypotheses: first, high RSA should be related to decreased depressive symptoms only when social resources (social support) are available; second, utilization of available social resources (social engagement) should serve as a mechanism for the positive effects of RSA. To test these hypotheses, we measured RSA in 131 adults. Participants reported their social support, social engagement, and depressive symptoms. Six months later, they again reported their depressive symptoms. Participants with higher RSA reported fewer depressive symptoms six months later, but only under conditions of high social support. The interaction between RSA and social support in predicting depressive symptoms was fully mediated by social engagement. These findings provide crucial support for the idea that cardiac vagal control contributes to decreased depressive symptoms via social processes. Implications for biological sensitivity to context and differential susceptibility theories as well as for the prevention and treatment of depression are discussed.