Effects of Differential Strategies of Emotion Regulation

Abstract

Patients suffering from mental disorders, especially anxiety disorders, are often impaired by inadequate emotional reactions. Specific aspects are the insufficient perception of their own emotional states and the use of dysfunctional emotion regulation strategies. Both aspects are interdependent. Thus, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) comprises the development and training of adequate emotion regulation strategies. Traditionally, reappraisal is the most common strategy, but strategies of acceptance are becoming more important in the course of advancing CBT. Indeed, there is evidence that emotion regulation strategies differ in self-reported effectiveness, psychophysiological reactions, and underlying neural correlates. However, comprehensive comparisons of different emotion regulation strategies are sparse. The present study, therefore, compared the effect of three common emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression) on self-reported effectiveness, recollection, and psychophysiological as well as electroencephalographic dimensions. Twenty-nine healthy participants were instructed to either reappraise, accept, suppress, or passively observe their upcoming emotional reactions while anxiety- and sadness-inducing pictures were presented. Results showed a compelling effect of reappraisal on emotional experience, skin conductance response, and P300 amplitude. Acceptance was almost as effective as reappraisal, but led to increased emotional experience. Combining all results, suppression was shown to be the least effective but significantly decreased emotional experience when thoughts and feelings had to be suppressed. Moreover, results show that greater propensity for rumination differentially impairs strategies of emotion regulation.

The effectiveness of an integrated counseling program on emotional regulation among undergraduate students with depression

“…In addition, the activity of understanding and accepting emotions or applying acceptance and identifying automatic thought techniques generated emotional acceptance of ER strategies, in line with the research reporting that emotional acceptance strategies effectively promoted ER [23]. The activity of "tracking thoughts" applied to the identification of the automatic thought techniques of CBT to promote the understanding and acceptance of emotions, as well as learning about ER strategies.…”

How People Emotionally Respond to the News on COVID-19: An Online Survey

“…Given the importance of regulating emotions in face of emotional stimuli, several studies have considered different types of Emotion Regulation (ER) strategies and the adaptive use of these strategies in various situations ( Boehme, Biehl, & Mühlberger, 2019 ; Gutentag, Halperin, Porat, Bigman, & Tamir, 2017 ; Lennarz, Hollenstein, Lichtwarck-Aschoff, Kuntsche, & Granic, 2019 ). Emotion regulation is referred to as the extrinsic and intrinsic processes involved in monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions, particularly in terms of intensity and temporal properties to achieve people’s goals ( Thompson, 1994 ).…”

Assessing beliefs about emotion generation and change: The conceptualisation, development, and validation of the Cognitive Mediation Beliefs Questionnaire (CMBQ)

“…Most prominently, Gross' (2014) process model of emotion regulation incorporates five emotion regulation strategies: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. Cognitive change (or cognitive reappraisal), the modification of one's appraisal of a situation in order to alter its emotional impact (Gross, 2015), is among the best studied emotion regulation strategies (McRae et al, 2010), and is demonstrably one of the most effective ways to down-regulate negative affect (Boehme et al, 2019). Cognitive change is associated with a gamut of adaptive psychophysiological (e.g., Ray et al, 2010), and neurological (e.g., Ochsner et al, 2004) outcomes.…”

“…This has the advantage of giving the patient some volition over their emotional reactivity, because they can learn to execute cognitive change autonomously, thus exercising emotional responsibility (Clark, 2013). In sum, cognitive change boasts empirical support within emotion regulation literature (Boehme et al, 2019), and is the backbone of prominent psychotherapies.…”