Researchers have documented the consequences of both expressing and suppressing emotion using between-subjects designs. It may be argued, however, that successful adaptation depends not so much on any one regulatory process, but on the ability to flexibly enhance or suppress emotional expression in accord with situational demands. We tested this hypothesis among New York City college students in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Subjects' performance in a laboratory task in which they enhanced emotional expression, suppressed emotional expression, and behaved normally on different trials was examined as a prospective predictor of their adjustment across the first two years of college. Results supported the flexibility hypothesis. A regression analysis controlling for initial distress and motivation and cognitive resources found that subjects who were better able to enhance and suppress the expression of emotion evidenced less distress by the end of the second year. Memory deficits were also observed for both the enhancement and the suppression tasks, suggesting that both processes require cognitive resources.

There is growing interest in complicated grief reactions as a possible new diagnostic category for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. However, no research has yet shown that complicated grief has incremental validity (i.e., predicts unique variance in functioning). The authors addressed this issue in 2 studies by comparing grief, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms with different measures of functioning (interviewer ratings, friend ratings, self-report, and autonomic arousal). The 1st study (N ϭ 73) used longitudinal data collected at 4 and 18 months postloss, and the 2nd study (N ϭ 447) used cross-sectional data collected 2.5-3.5 years postloss. With depression and PTSD controlled, grief emerged as a unique predictor of functioning, both crosssectionally and prospectively. The findings provide convergent support for the incremental validity of complicated grief as an independent marker of bereavement-related psychopathology.

Though longstanding clinical observation reflected in the DSM-IV suggests that the rage characteristic of borderline personality disorder (BPD) often appears in response to perceived rejection, the role of perceived rejection in triggering rage in BPD has never been empirically tested. Extending basic personality research on rejection sensitivity to a clinical sample, a priming-pronunciation experiment and a 21-day experience-sampling diary examined the contingent relationship between perceived rejection and rage in participants diagnosed with BPD compared to healthy controls. Despite the differences in these two assessment methods, the indices of rejection-contingent rage that they produced were both elevated in the BPD group, and were strongly interrelated. They provide corroborating evidence that reactions to perceived rejection significantly explain the rage seen in BPD.

Recent evidence suggests that the sensitivity of emotion responses to changing context may be a key element of psychological adjustment and psychopathology (Bonanno et al., 2007; Rottenberg, Kasch, Gross, & Gotlib, 2002). However, there have been no previous investigations to examine emotion context sensitivity and adjustment following stressful life events. This investigation addressed this deficit in a sample of middle-aged bereaved adults (N = 48) whose emotion responses were measured as they described loss and non-loss-related events during a laboratory interview 4 months after the death of their spouse or child. Symptoms of depression were assessed using structured clinical interviews at 4 and 18 months postloss. Although positive emotions were beneficial regardless of context, context sensitivity for negative emotions at 4 months predicted fewer depression symptoms at 18 months. These findings suggest that the capacity to shift negative emotion responses according to changing context may differentiate those individuals who will show improvements in depression symptoms over time from those who will show chronic impairments. Implications for future research and clinical intervention are discussed.

Traditional theories of coping emphasize the value of attending to and expressing negative emotion while recovering from traumatic life events. However, recent evidence suggests that the tendency to direct attention away from negative affective experience (i.e., repressive coping) may promote resilience following extremely aversive events (e.g., the death of a spouse). The current study extends this line of investigation by showing that both bereaved and nonbereaved individuals who exhibited repressive coping behavior--as measured by the discrepancy between affective experience and sympathetic nervous system response--had fewer symptoms of psychopathology, experienced fewer health problems and somatic complaints, and were rated as better adjusted by close friends than those who did not exhibit repressive coping. Results are discussed in terms of recent developments in cognitive and neuroimaging research suggesting that repressive coping may serve a protective function.