Gender Differences in Generating Cognitive Reappraisals for Threatening Situations: Reappraisal Capacity Shields Against Depressive Symptoms in Men, but Not Women

Abstract

Despite major research interest regarding gender differences in emotion regulation, it is still not clear whether men and women differ in their basic capacity to implement specific emotion regulation strategies, as opposed to indications of the habitual use of these strategies in self-reports. Similarly, little is known on how such basic capacities relate to indices of well-being in both sexes. This study took a novel approach by investigating gender differences in the capacity for generating cognitive reappraisals in adverse situations in a sample of 67 female and 59 male students, using a maximum performance test of the inventiveness in generating reappraisals. Participants’ self-perceived efficacy in emotion regulation was additionally assessed. Analyses showed that men and women did not differ in their basic capacity to generate alternative appraisals for anxiety-eliciting scenarios, suggesting similar functional cognitive mechanisms in the implementation of this strategy. Yet, higher cognitive reappraisal capacity predicted fewer depressive daily-life experiences in men only. These findings suggest that in the case of cognitive reappraisal, benefits for well-being in women might depend on a more complex combination of basic ability, habits, and efficacy-beliefs, along with the use of other emotion regulation strategies. The results of this study may have useful implications for psychotherapy research and practice.

More habitual physical activity is linked to the use of specific, more adaptive cognitive reappraisal strategies in dealing with stressful events

“…Participants are instructed to imagine the situation happening to them and to generate and write down as many different ways as possible to think about the situation in a way that diminishes their negative emotions. In the present study, four vignettes depicting potential stressors (de Assuncao, Golke, Geisler, & Weber, 2015;Perchtold et al, 2019) were presented one at a time on separate pages and were supplemented by a picture in order to make them more vivid. For each vignette, participants were given 20 s to imagine the situation happening to them.…”

“…Participants' responses to the RIT items were used for the assessment of behavioural measures of their reappraisal inventiveness. Following the scoring procedure of the RIT and previous relevant research (Fink et al, 2017;Papousek et al, 2017;Perchtold et al, 2018Perchtold et al, , 2019Rominger et al, 2018;Weber et al, 2014), Table 1 for descriptive statistics for all reappraisal measures.…”

“…However, although this may be interpreted as more physically active participants experiencing less stress during reappraisal of the RIT situations and thus excelling at higher quality reappraisals, note that the RIT does not necessarily elicit stress at the time of reappraisal. Rather, the RIT measures individuals' theoretical, brain-based capacity to reappraise potentially relevant stressors (e.g., Perchtold et al, 2019).…”

“…RIT fluency was used as an index of quantity of reappraisal ideas, calculated as the total number of generated nonidentical reappraisals (α = .94). The fluency index was independently rated by two experienced researchers, with a resulting intraclass correlation (ICC) of .99 (see previous satisfying interrater reliabilities of ICC = .90 to .99 inPapousek et al, 2017;Perchtold et al, 2019;Weber et al, 2014). To gain an index of quality, reappraisal were categorized according to the category scheme of the RIT(Weber et al, 2014), which allows to categorize reappraisal ideas according to content.…”

Failure to reappraise: Malevolent creativity is linked to revenge ideation and impaired reappraisal inventiveness in the face of stressful, anger-eliciting events

“…This is particularly important in new or unexpected adverse situations, in which relying on one's habitual strategy for cognitive reappraisal is not sufficient (Fink et al, 2017;Papousek et al, 2017). This general idea is corroborated by empirical research showing that individuals generating a higher number and certain quality of reappraisal ideas for stressful, anger-eliciting events reported less chronic stress experience, and a lower proneness for hostile and suspicious thoughts (Perchtold et al, 2018b(Perchtold et al, , 2019a.…”