Valuing emotional control in social anxiety disorder: A multimethod study of emotion beliefs and emotion regulation.

Abstract

This study examines relationships between emotion beliefs and emotion regulation strategy use among people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and a psychologically healthy control group. Using experience-sampling methodology, we tested group differences in 2 types of emotion beliefs (emotion control values and emotion malleability beliefs) and whether emotion beliefs predicted trait and daily use of cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression. People with SAD endorsed higher emotion control values and lower emotion malleability beliefs than did healthy controls. Across groups, emotion control values were positively associated with suppression (but unrelated to reappraisal), and emotion malleability beliefs were negatively associated with suppression and positively associated with reappraisal. We also addressed 2 exploratory questions related to measurement. First, we examined whether trait and state measures of emotion regulation strategies were related to emotion control values in different ways and found similar associations across measures. Second, we examined whether explicit and implicit measures of emotion control values were related to daily emotion regulation strategy use in different ways—and found that an implicit measure was unrelated to strategy use. Results are discussed in the context of growing research on metaemotions and the measurement of complex features of emotion regulation.

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

“…Beliefs about emotion and emotion regulation, or "emotion beliefs" (Ford & Gross, 2019, p. 74), appear to be important for acute outcomes (e.g., emotional experiences), and chronic cumulative outcomes (e.g., well-being; Ford & Gross, 2019). Negative emotion beliefs are a key criterion defining emotional disorders (Bullis et al, 2019), but empirical research lags (Goodman et al, 2020). Two emotion beliefs that are garnering growing interest are, (a) whether emotions are good or bad ("goodness"), and (b) whether emotions are controllable or uncontrollable ("controllability"); neither capture the S-R and C-M viewpoints at the centre of the current paper.…”

“…Extending the area of emotion beliefs beyond the emergent concepts of goodness and controllability is important for emotion science Tamir et al, 2007), because people's active attempts to manage their emotions might be in part predicated on their beliefs about how emotions occur and how they can be managed (Ford & Gross, 2019). The proposed S-R and C-M beliefs might be important for emotion regulation, because such superordinate emotion beliefs precede emotion regulation attempts (Trincas et al, 2016), and influence the occurrence and effectiveness of emotion regulation attempts (Goodman et al, 2020). For example, a belief that cognitive change cannot yield emotion change, may result in premature stopping of emotion-regulation efforts (Sheppes et al, 2015).…”

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Relationships between Empathy and Implicit Theories of Emotions (in Chinese and Russians)

“…Incremental ITEs are also linked to the suppression of emotions [46]. Interestingly, incremental theories of emotions are important for the adoption of emotional control and suppression strategies, but they are not related to cognitive overestimation [47].…”

Investigation of the Effects of Sports Education on University Students' Stress Coping Strategies

“…Generally, aerobic exercises are more effective in decreasing the stress level (Akyol & Imamoğlu, 2018). In the last years, a lot of research has been done to control and manage the feeling of people (Goodman, Kashdan, & İmamoğlu, 2020). In a study by Yamaner, Cplak, and Imamoğlu (2020) found sports education has a positive effect on university students' optimal performance.…”