Distinctive effects of fear and sadness induction on anger and aggressive behavior

Abstract

A recent study has reported that the successful implementation of cognitive regulation of emotion depends on higher-level cognitive functions, such as top-down control, which may be impaired in stressful situations. This calls for “cognition free” self-regulatory strategies that do not require top-down control. In contrast to the cognitive regulation of emotion that emphasizes the role of cognition, traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine views the relationship among different types of emotions as promoting or counteracting each other without the involvement of cognition, which provides an insightful perspective for developing “cognition free” regulatory strategies. In this study, we examined two hypotheses regarding the modulation of anger and aggressive behavior: sadness counteracts anger and aggressive behavior, whereas fear promotes anger and aggressive behavior. Participants were first provoked by reading extremely negative feedback on their viewpoints (Study 1) and by watching anger-inducing movie clips (Study 2). Then, these angry participants were assigned to three equivalent groups and viewed sad, fear-inducing, or neutral materials to evoke the corresponding emotions. The results showed that participants displayed a lower level of aggressive behavior when sadness was later induced and a higher level of anger when fear was later induced. These results provide evidence that supports the hypothesis of mutual promotion and counteraction relationships among these types of emotions and imply a “cognition free” approach to regulating anger and aggressive behavior.

Regulating Anger under Stress via Cognitive Reappraisal and Sadness

“…Rather, this strategy implies two major points: First, it proposes that sadness is a potentially efficient emotion to counteract previously evoked anger and aggressive behavior; second, if sadness can be evoked in a harmless and effortless way (e.g., by watching sad movies), then it might be an alternative approach (relative to cognitive reappraisal) to regulate anger. Our recent study provided behavioral evidence supporting the hypothesis that SCA and found that subsequently induced sadness reduced an angry individual’s aggressive behavior (but not angry feelings) more than neutral or fear emotions ( Zhan et al, 2015 ). In that study, participants were first provoked by reading negative feedback on their viewpoints or by watching anger-inducing movie clips.…”

“…First, a previous study found that cognitive reappraisal fails to regulate fear conditioning under stress ( Raio et al, 2013 ). Furthermore, regarding the effects of the SCA strategy, our previous research showed that inducing sadness among participants (relative to fear and neutral emotions) after they were provoked decreased their aggression ( Zhan et al, 2015 ). The present study successfully replicated previous studies and directly compared cognitive reappraisal with the SCA strategy after controlling for the object of regulation (i.e., anger and aggressive behavior) and the means of regulation (i.e., both cognitive reappraisal and the regulatory sadness emotion were induced by watching videos) across conditions.…”

“…In contrast to cognitive regulation, which emphasizes the role of cognition in executing top-down ER, the “sadness counteracts anger” SCA strategy, a novel strategy based on the theories of traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine, provides an alternative approach that might overcome the deficits in the cognitive ER in stressful situations. Theories of traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine view different types of mental states and emotions as having mutual promotion and counteraction (allelopathy) relationships ( Figure 1 ) ( Zhan et al, 2015 ). One example is the hypothesis of SCA.…”

“…Based on traditional Chinese philosophy and medicine, which examine how different types of emotions promote or counteract one another, we have developed a novel emotion regulation strategy whereby one emotion is used to alter another. For example, our previous experiment showed that sadness induction (after watching a sad film) could reduce aggressive behavior associated with anger [i.e., “sadness counteracts anger” (SCA)] ( Zhan et al, 2015 ). Relative to the CER strategy requiring someone to think about certain cognitive reappraisals to reinterpret the meaning of an unpleasant situation, watching a film or listening to music and experiencing the emotion contained therein seemingly requires less cognitive effort and control; therefore, this SCA strategy may be an alternative strategy that compensates for the limitations of cognitive regulation strategies, especially in stressful situations.…”

A Study of the Effect of Emotions and Software on Prosodic Features on Spoken Utterances in Urdu Language

“…One way ANOVA was performed by considering acoustic cues with affect ratings. Two hypothesis was examined in [19] regarding the modulation of anger and aggressive behavior. Anger and aggressive behavior was counteracted by sadness whereas they are promoted by fear.…”