Regulation of emotions in the community: suppression and reappraisal strategies and its psychometric properties

Objective: The German Version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) has recently been published. The questionnaire investigates two common emotion regulation strategies (10 items) on two scales (suppression, reappraisal). Major aims of the study were to assess the reliability and factor structure of the ERQ, to determine population based norms and to investigate relations of suppression and reappraisal to anxiety, depression and demographic characteristics

Regulation of emotions in the community: suppression and reappraisal strategies and its psychometric properties

Objective: The German Version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) has recently been published. The questionnaire investigates two common emotion regulation strategies (10 items) on two scales (suppression, reappraisal). Major aims of the study were to assess the reliability and factor structure of the ERQ, to determine population based norms and to investigate relations of suppression and reappraisal to anxiety, depression and demographic characteristics

Transfer of manualized Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) for social phobia into clinical practice: study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Psychodynamic psychotherapy is frequently applied in the treatment of social phobia. Nevertheless, there has been a lack of studies on the transfer of manualized treatments to routine psychodynamic practice. Our study is the first one to examine the effects of additional training in a manualized Short Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (STPP) procedure on outcome in routine psychotherapy for social phobia. This study is an extension to a large multi-site RCT (N = 512) comparing the efficacy of STPP to Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) of Social Phobia.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>The manualized treatment is designed for a time limited approach with 25 individual sessions of STPP over 6 months. Private practitioners will be randomized to training in manualized STPP vs. treatment as usual without a specific training (control condition). We plan to enrol a total of 105 patients (84 completers). Assessments will be conducted before treatment starts, after 8 and 15 weeks, after 25 treatment sessions, at the end of treatment, 6 months and 12 months after termination of treatment. The primary outcome measure is the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. Remission from social phobia is defined scoring with 30 or less points on this scale.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>We will investigate how the treatment can be transferred from a controlled trial into the less structured setting of routine clinical care. This question represents Phase IV of psychotherapy research. It combines the benefits of randomized controlled and naturalistic research. The study is genuinely designed to promote faster and more widespread dissemination of effective interventions. It will answer the questions whether manualized STPP can be implemented into routine outpatient care, whether the new methods improve treatment courses and outcomes and whether treatment effects reached in routine psychotherapeutic treatments are comparable to those of the controlled, strictly manualized treatment of the main study.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>German Clinical Trials Register (DRKS) DRKS00000570</p

The intertwined effect of HRM practices and transformational leadership on employees’ attitudes in an M&A context: Evidence from a collaborative and mixed-methods study

This mixed-methods study investigates transformational leadership in the context of a recent merger through a collaborative research project aimed at co-producing scientifically rigorous and practically relevant knowledge. Using qualitative and quantitative data, this study contributes to the growing stream of literature aimed at exploring how two key organisational levers, specifically leadership and HRM, impact the development of positive employees’ attitudes, which is central to the success of any M&A process. In particular, this paper shows that in M&A contexts, HRM opportunity-enhancing practices (aimed at allowing employees to exercise their competencies and efforts in engaging with the organisation’s decision-making processes) mediate the relation- ships between transformational leadership and both employees’ job satisfaction and affective commitment. This suggests that organisations interested in developing employees’ affective commitment and job satisfaction in merger and acquisition (M&A) contexts should complement transformational leadership with contextualized HRM practices to support employees coping with issues related to the perception of reduced opportunities. In addition, attention should be paid to leadership behaviours of local leaders, and not necessarily of those at the apex of the organisational hierarchy guiding the merger

Depersonalization Disorder: Disconnection of Cognitive Evaluation from Autonomic Responses to Emotional Stimuli

<div><p>Background</p><p>Patients with depersonalization disorder (DPD) typically complain about emotional detachment. Previous studies found reduced autonomic responsiveness to emotional stimuli for DPD patients as compared to patients with anxiety disorders. We aimed to investigate autonomic responsiveness to emotional auditory stimuli of DPD patients as compared to patient controls. Furthermore, we examined the modulatory effect of mindful breathing on these responses as well as on depersonalization intensity.</p> <p>Methods</p><p>22 DPD patients and 15 patient controls balanced for severity of depression and anxiety, age, sex and education, were compared regarding 1) electrodermal and heart rate data during a resting period, and 2) autonomic responses and cognitive appraisal of standardized acoustic affective stimuli in two conditions (normal listening and mindful breathing).</p> <p>Results</p><p>DPD patients rated the emotional sounds as significantly more neutral as compared to patient controls and standardized norm ratings. At the same time, however, they responded more strongly to acoustic emotional stimuli and their electrodermal response pattern was more modulated by valence and arousal as compared to patient controls. Mindful breathing reduced severity of depersonalization in DPD patients and increased the arousal modulation of electrodermal responses in the whole sample. Finally, DPD patients showed an increased electrodermal lability in the rest period as compared to patient controls.</p> <p>Conclusions</p><p>These findings demonstrated that the cognitive evaluation of emotional sounds in DPD patients is disconnected from their autonomic responses to those emotional stimuli. The increased electrodermal lability in DPD may reflect increased introversion and cognitive control of emotional impulses. The findings have important psychotherapeutic implications.</p> </div

Effects of mindful breathing.

<p>Average ratings of the degree of grounding, the overall sound intensity, and results of the state version of the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (S-CDS) as a function of group (DPD patients vs. patient controls) and mindfulness manipulation (normal listening vs. mindful breathing). Error bars indicate SEM.</p

Physiological responses elicited by neutral and emotional sounds.

<p>Physiological responses elicited by neutral and emotional sounds as a function of group (DPD patients vs. patient controls) and mindfulness manipulation (normal listening vs. mindful breathing). A) Skin conductance response (SCR) amplitudes, B) phasic heart rate (HR) responses. Error bars indicate SEM, neut = neutral, neg = negative, and pos = positive sounds; -/+ indicate medium and high arousal, respectively.</p

Valence and arousal ratings for neutral and emotional sounds.

<div><p>A) Valence and arousal ratings for neutral and emotional sounds as a function of group (DPD patients vs. patient controls). The center of the ellipses in the left and middle column represent the mean rating and the radii correspond to the standard error of mean (SEM). The values next to the ellipses depict mean and SEM for vividness ratings. The right column shows valence and arousal ratings collapsed across arousal categories as a function of group with error bars indicating SEM.</p> <p>B) Average differences to the norm ratings (Bradley & Lang, 2007) [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0074331#B30" target="_blank">30</a>]. The dots in the left and middle column represent mean norm ratings and the crosses depict average ratings of each group. The bars in the right column depict differences to norm valence and arousal ratings collapsed across arousal categories as a function of group with error bars indicating SEM. neut = neutral, neg = negative, and pos = positive sounds; -/+ indicate medium and high arousal, respectively.</p></div