The present study used a basic behavioral paradigm derived from Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a contemporary behavioral account of language and cognition, to validate principle-based definitions of the cognitive interventions of defusion and reappraisal. Ninety-one participants first underwent an RFT learning paradigm that established symbolically generalized avoidance. Participants were then randomized to a defusion, reappraisal, or control condition. The main outcomes were equivalence responding—indicative of the trained relational network and analogous to the content of cognition—and avoidance—analogous to the behavioral impact of cognition. Defusion and reappraisal significantly reduced avoidance responding, providing support for the hypothesis that these interventions target the behavior of relational framing. Mediation analyses, conducted on an exploratory basis, revealed differences between the mechanisms of defusion and reappraisal and provided preliminary support for the classification of these interventions as a functional context intervention and a relational context intervention, respectively.

The experience of being diagnosed with and treated for cancer is an extremely stressful experience for most individuals. Historically, the literature on stress and coping has focused on negative outcomes, such as depression and anxiety, in relation to one‘s experience with cancer. Under-represented in the literature has been a theoretical framework that examines positive and transformative experiences that may occur throughout the cancer experience. The current study assessed interpersonal variables that rarely have been investigated in relation to one‘s experience with cancer (i.e., received social support and unsupportive interactions) and their association with depressive symptoms, positive emotion, and posttraumatic growth in a sample of men and women recently diagnosed with cancer. The main research design was cross-sectional (although longitudinal analyses were conducted on an exploratory basis), and self-report data were collected from 60 participants who had been diagnosed with cancer on average 5.68 months prior to data collection. Contrary to hypotheses, hierarchical regression equations indicated that received social support was not related to any of the outcome variables. However, unsupportive responses from a main support person were found to be significantly and positively related to participants‘ reports of depressive symptoms and posttraumatic growth within the context of their cancer experience. A major contribution of the present study is that it called attention to the importance of studying unsupportive interactions separately from social support. Moreover, this is the first study to investigate the relationship between unsupportive interactions and posttraumatic growth in a sample of recently diagnosed cancer patients. Findings were surprising in that the more unsupportive responses individuals with cancer received from a main support person, the more personal growth they reported. The results from the present study have important research and clinical implications for understanding the relationship between unsupportive interactions and posttraumatic growth among men and women who have been diagnosed with cancer.

The objective of this study was to investigate the association between both social support and unsupportive interactions and psychological outcomes, in a sample of college students who recently had experienced a stressful event. The research design was cross-sectional, and data were collected from 142 college students. As hypothesized, a significant positive association was found between unsupportive interactions received by participants and depressive symptoms. Contrary to hypotheses, no significant associations were found between unsupportive interactions and positive emotion or posttraumatic growth. Additionally, no significant relationship was evident between received emotional support and the outcome variables. Exploratory analysis revealed that positive reappraisal mediated the relationship between total received support and posttraumatic growth. A major contribution of the present study is evidence for unsupportive interactions significantly predicting depressive symptoms in a college-aged sample. Additionally, the current study adds to the literature concerning the correlates of posttraumatic growth.

abstract: Past research has focused on the important role humor plays in interpersonal relationships; however, researchers have also identified intrapersonal applications of humor, showing that people often use humor to alleviate negative affect, and that humor has generally been found to beneficially influence mental health. The purpose of this study is to examine whether humor-based coping can be utilized as an intrapersonal tool to aid or facilitate creative thinking and problem solving when faced with a distressing situation. The current study posits reduced rumination as the mechanism by which humor facilitates creativity. To measure creativity, a task was devised that had individuals brainstorm under some distress; participants were asked to recall and describe an ongoing, unresolved problem they were facing, followed by a rumination induction, as rumination is characterized by perseverative thoughts that hinder constructive action. After the rumination induction, participants were randomly assigned to a control condition or either of two emotion regulation conditions: positive reappraisal or humor-based reappraisal. Following this, participants were asked to complete an “alternate solutions” task, based on Guilford’s Alternate Uses Task, generating solutions for their own unresolved problem. Results of the study showed that the use of humor was indeed related to a decrease in rumination, but that the humor condition did not outperform either control condition on any measure of creativity (performing worse in some cases). Limits of this study and future directions are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Psychology 2019

Il progetto di ricerca indaga la regolazione emotiva analizzando le interazioni complesse tra strategie di regolazione dell'individuo e variabili proprie dello stimolo elicitante. A tale scopo, il progetto si struttura in tre studi. Nello Studio 1, una batteria di questionari per la valutazione di strategie stabili di regolazione e coping è stata somministrata ad un campione di 198 studenti infermieri che partecipavano allo Studio 3 e ad un gruppo di controllo di 416 studenti universitari. Lo studio presenta inoltre una validazione preliminare dell'Emotion Regulation Questionnaire in lingua italiana. Lo Studio 2 riguarda la misurazione dell'impatto emotivo di stimoli elicitanti: una batteria di filmati emotivi è stata costruita attraverso la manipolazione di due dimensioni di appraisal emotivo e somministrata a 420 studenti universitari a cui era chiesto di valutare la propria esperienza emotiva. Infine, nello Studio 3, uno stesso filmato di chirurgia ma incorporato all'interno di contesti diversi (costituiti dai filmati testati nello studio 2) è stato sottoposto a 163 studenti infermieri allo scopo di analizzare gli effetti a breve termine di due strategie di rivalutazione cognitiva quando l'individuo affronta un evento ad alto impatto emotivo contestualizzato. Ai partecipanti era chiesto di osservare gli eventi cercando di immedesimarsi o di distanziarsi. Lo studio analizza le risposte emotive in tre sistemi di risposta emotiva: fisiologico, comportamentale ed esperienziale. / The present research program investigated emotion regulation analyzing the complex interaction between variables concerning individual regulatory strategies and variables concerning the eliciting stimulus. To this purpose, the research program was structured into three studies. In Study 1, a set of questionnaires assessing individual stable emotion regulation and coping strategies was administered to a sample of 198 nursing students who participated to Study 3 and to a control sample of 416 undergraduate students. A preliminary Italian validation of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) was conducted. Study 2 aimed at measuring the emotional impact of eliciting stimuli: a set of emotion-generating films were constructed according to the manipulation of appraisal criteria and administered to 420 undergraduate students who were asked to rate their emotional experience. In Study 3, 163 nursing students watched the same surgery clip included within different contextual scenarios provided by the film stimuli tested in Study 2. The main goal was the investigation of the short-terms outcomes of two types of reappraisal when the individual is confronted with a contextualized high-impact emotional event: to this purpose, participants were asked to adopt a detached vs. immersed point of view. Three systems of emotional response were analyzed as indicated by emotion literature: behavioural, physiological and experiential.

Emotion regulation involves changing the emotions that one experiences and expresses. Many studies have shown that culture influences emotion regulation and that regulating emotions can have positive or negative effects on relationship quality (English & John, 2013; Impett et al., 2011; Kalokerinos, Greenaway, & Denson, 2014; Regan, Lakhanpal, Anguiano, 2012; Su, Wei, & Tsai, 2014; Yelsma & Athappilly, 1988). Although research has studied culture, emotion regulation, and relationship quality separately, essentially no studies have combined the three factors to see how they are related. Specifically, there is very little information on whether emotion regulation plays a similar role in relationship quality across different cultures. The present study looks at daily associations between emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, suppression, avoidance, and taking action) and emotions felt due to the partner, moderated by marriage type (American, Indian-arranged, Indian-love). I compare 128 heterosexual couples from the United States and India (in love and arranged marriages). These couples completed daily diaries once a day for seven days and reported the types of emotion regulation they used, as well as their positive or negative emotions due to their partner. I found that for Indian love and arranged couples, taking action was associated with increased positive partner induced emotions and reduced negative emotions. In contrast, taking action for U.S. couples had the opposite effect and was associated with increased negative emotions due to the partner, with no effect on positive emotions. In the U.S. couples, I also found that suppression and avoidance were associated with decreased positive partner induced emotions, but there was no effect for the Indian couples. With reappraisal, I found that high levels were associated with decreased negative partner induced emotions for all couples. Overall, results suggest that effective regulation of negative partner induced emotions can protect relationship quality, but that what constitutes effective regulation depends on cultural context.

Previous research has shown that cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, has beneficial effects on emotion experience during strategy engagement. The present study extends this work by investigating whether cognitive reappraisal impacts the anticipation of an aversive event during, and five days following, strategy engagement. Emotion profiles, including psychophysiological and self-report indices, were also examined to assess whether reappraisal inhibits affective responses. Participants underwent habituation and simple discriminatory fear conditioning. Stimuli were pictures of a snake and a spider. Two days later participants returned to the laboratory and were either i) cued to engage in cognitive reappraisal while imagining the stimuli ii) exposed to the stimuli with no reappraisal instructions iii) exposed to the stimuli while engaging in cognitive reappraisal or iv) had an experience unrelated to the stimuli (control condition). Participants returned to the lab five days later and were exposed to both pictures paralleling initial habituation and conditioning protocols. It was found that cognitive reappraisal during exposure reduced expectancy of the UCS faster than exposure alone and resulted in lower mean skin conductance response (SCR) for those low, but not high, in fear of snakes. Five days later participants in the intervention conditions, compared to the control condition, demonstrated less anticipation of the UCS and smaller emotion-modulated startle magnitudes to the UCS. These findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal may be an effective tool for reducing anticipation of an aversive event and can result in enduring fear inhibition. This may have important implications for the treatment of individuals with anxiety disorders. The present study also examined the relationship between cardiac vagal control, indexed by respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), and subsequent sympathetic arousal during fear conditioning, indexed by SCR. Results demonstrate that participants with low, compared to high, resting RSA had larger SCRs during habituation and conditioning trials. In addition, participants with lower RSA showed greater SCR reactivity following UCS presentation to both conditioned stimuli, suggesting that those with the lower RSA initially differentiated less between the UCS paired and unpaired images. These findings are consistent with theories that associate faster recovery from emotionally demanding situations with greater cardiac vagal control.

abstract: Cognitive reappraisal, or redefining the meaning of a stressful circumstance, is useful in regulating emotional responses to acute stressors and may be mobilized to up- or down- regulate the stressors’ emotional salience. A conceptually-related but more targeted emotion regulation strategy to that offered by cognitive reappraisal, termed positive cognitive shift, was examined in the current study. Positive cognitive shift (“PCS”) is defined as a point of cognitive transformation during a chronic, stressful situation that alters the meaning and emotional salience of the situation for the individual. Key aspects of the PCS that differentiate it from the broader reappraisal construct are that it 1) is relevant to responses to chronic (versus acute) aversive events, 2) is deployed when there is a mismatch between coping and stressors, and 3) involves insight together with redefinition in meaning of the situation generating stress. The current study used qualitative and quantitative analyses to 1) examine whether PCS is an observable, reliable, and valid experience in response to a stressful event that occurred in the past year, and 2) test whether PCS moderates the relations between the number of past-year stressful life circumstances and subsequent emotional well-being and functional health. A community sample of 175 middle-aged individuals were interviewed regarded a past chronic stressor and completed questionnaires regarding number of past year stressors and health outcomes. Theory-based coding of interviews was conducted to derive reliable scores for PCS, and findings indicated that PCS was evident in 37.7 % of participant responses. Furthermore, PCS scores were related positively to openness, personal growth from one’s most difficult lifetime event, and affect intensity-calm, in line with predictions. Also in line with prediction, PCS moderated the relations between number of past-year life events and health outcomes, such that the deleterious relations between past year stressful events and cognitive functioning, wellbeing, positive affect, and negative affect were weaker among individuals higher versus lower in PCS. Of note, PCS moderation effects diminished as the number of stressful events increased. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Psychology 2018

Distraction and cognitive reappraisal are two widely used types of emotional regulation strategies that are thought to be reliable when down-regulating our emotions to negative or unpleasant stimuli. Gross‘s process model of emotion generation (Gross, 1998) holds that they differ in the time they intervene in the emotiongenerative process and also how they impact emotional responses when they are used to regulate negative emotions. Distraction which involves attentional deployment is expected to operate earlier than reappraisal that entails meaning evaluation and reevaluation. Cognitive reappraisal encompasses various strategies that are used to regulate our emotions through reinterpretation. Self-focused and situation-focused reappraisal are two of them. The former is considered more efficient and thus would lead to a greater attenuation of the LPPthan the latter. To test this prediction, electrocortical responses to angry faces when using these strategies were measured using the late positive potential (LPP). Twenty four healthy participants were recruited for the study and were cued to down-regulate their emotions using these strategies while angry and neutral facial stimuli were seen on a computer screen. Contrary to prediction, distraction did not modulate the LPP earlier than reappraisal. However, supporting our hypothesis self-focused strategies largely modulated the LPP than situation-focused strategy. The pattern of result suggests that reappraisal might have an influence on the early neural processes of emotion generation and that the subcategories of cognitive reappraisal have a differential effect on emotional regulation.

One thing that may affect our decision making is emotions, and emotions are something we can regulate, this is referred to as emotion regulation. the use of emotion regulation strategies influence our decision making how this process out at the neural level The findings within this will suggest that the emotion regulation strategy reappraisal, compared to suppression, our decision making At the neural level, findings within this will indicate that neural changes may occur when individuals regulate their emotions in relation to making decisions. For instance, decreased activity within the striatum was associated with making less risky decisions when using the emotion regulation strategy reappraisal. On the other hand, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex may be important in mediating the neural systems of emotional states and working memory in order to enable decision making. This will also cover some prominent theories of emotion and decision making. Emotion regulation, as well as strategies for emotion regulation, will be explained.