Emotion Regulation by Psychological Distance and Level of Abstraction: Two Meta-Analyses

Abstract

Self-reflection is suggested to attenuate feelings, yet researchers disagree on whether adopting a distant or near perspective, or processing the experience abstractly or concretely, is more effective. Given the relationship between psychological distance and level of abstraction, we suggest the “construal-matching hypothesis”: Psychological distance and abstraction differently influence emotion intensity, depending on whether the emotion’s appraisal involves low-level or high-level construal. Two meta-analyses tested the effects of psychological distance ( k = 230) and level-of-abstraction ( k = 98) manipulations on emotional experience. A distant perspective attenuated emotional experience ( g = 0.52) but with weaker effects for high-level ( g = 0.29; for example, self-conscious emotions) than low-level emotions ( g= 0.64; for example, basic emotions). Level of abstraction only attenuated the experience of low-level emotions ( g = 0.2) and showed a reverse (nonsignificant) effect for high-level emotions ( g = −0.13). These results highlight differences between distancing and level-of-abstraction manipulations and the importance of considering the type of emotion experienced in emotion regulation.

The effectiveness of self‐distanced versus self‐immersed reflections among adults: Systematic review and meta‐analysis of experimental studies

“…Taken together with meta-analytic estimates of psychological distancing strategies (Moran & Eyal, 2022;Soderberg et al, 2015) our findings suggest that self-distancing resembles an adaptive form of reflecting on autobiographical stressor experiences, relative to effectiveness, followed by cognitive outcomes (33%). The magnitude of effect for cognitive outcomes (e.g., intrusive thoughts, thought content, reasoning) was roughly equivalent to affective outcomes, yet there was greater imprecision in this estimate.…”

“…We seek to generate evidence on these unanswered questions regarding the effectiveness of self-distanced reflections via a systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental comparisons of these two vantage points. We expected self-distanced reflections to be superior to self-immersed reflections across all outcome categories (e.g., cognitive, affective), with magnitude of this difference likely small-to-moderate in nature (g < 0.40; Moran & Eyal, 2022).…”

How shifting visual perspective during autobiographical memory retrieval influences emotion: A change in retrieval orientation

“…They found that adopting an observer-like compared to an own eyes perspective decreased the intensity of anger and sadness, but did not affect guilt and shame. Other research, however, has demonstrated that adopting an observer-like perspective can amplify self-conscious emotions in some contexts (e.g., Libby et al, 2011 ; Valenti et al, 2011 ; Hung and Mukhopadhyay, 2012 ; Krishnamoorthy et al, 2021 ; Moran and Eyal, 2022 ). For example, Hung and Mukhopadhyay (2012) showed that adopting an observer perspective when visualizing hypothetical events increased the intensity of self-conscious emotions, whereas adopting an own eyes perspective increased the intensity of hedonic based emotions related to the situation itself (e.g., joy, excitement).…”

“…Four main theories have been proposed to explain why adopting a particular visual perspective or shifting across multiple viewpoints influences emotional aspects of AM retrieval (see Table 1 ). Some theories suggest that visual perspective impacts emotional aspects of AM by altering the appraisal processes people engage in during memory retrieval ( Wallace-Hadrill and Kamboj, 2016 ), while others suggest that shifting perspective influences emotional experiences by increasing psychological distance and the level of abstraction people engage in during memory retrieval ( Moran and Eyal, 2022 ).…”

“…In contrast, emotions such as anger or sadness do not require considering another agent’s perspective; thus, they are associated with a lower construal level ( Trope and Liberman, 2010 ). A recent meta-analysis examining psychological distance and emotional experiences showed that psychological distancing had stronger effects on low-level than high-level emotions, such that adopting an observer-like perspective might amplify emotional experiences for emotions that involve a higher level of construal (e.g., guilt, shame), in contrast to emotions that involve a lower level of construal (e.g., sadness, anger; Moran and Eyal, 2022 ). Additionally, a specific emotional category might have a higher or lower level of construal depending on whether people focus on more abstract versus concrete features of the event during retrieval (e.g., Valenti et al, 2011 ; Doré et al, 2015 ).…”