Sequential effects of reappraisal and rumination on anger during recall of an anger-provoking event

In everyday life, people often combine strategies to regulate their emotions. However, to date, most research has investigated emotion regulation strategies as if they occur independently from one another. The current study aims to better understand the sequential interplay between strategies by investigating how reappraisal and rumination interact to affect anger experience. After participants (N = 156) recalled a recent anger-provoking event, they were instructed to either a) reappraise the event twice, b) reappraise the event, and then ruminate about the event, c) ruminate about the event, and then reappraise the event, or d) ruminate twice about the event. The effects of the first strategy used replicated a large body of research: reappraisal was associated with a decrease in anger, but rumination was associated with no change in anger. There was a small interactive effect of the combination of the two strategies, such that those who ruminated and then reappraised showed a larger decrease in anger than those who reappraised and then ruminated. There were no other differences between groups. This suggests that the second strategy does have an effect over and beyond the first strategy, but this effect is small in size, highlighting the importance of the initial emotion regulation strategy used

Ready for the Worst? Negative Affect in Anticipation of a Stressor Does Not Protect Against Affective Reactivity.

Lay wisdom suggests feeling negative while awaiting an upcoming stressor - anticipatory negative affect - shields against the blow of the subsequent stressor. However, evidence is mixed, with different lines of research and theory indirectly suggesting that anticipatory negative affect is helpful, harmful, or has no effect on emotional outcomes. In two studies, we aimed to reconcile these competing views by examining the affective trajectory across hours, days, and months, separating affective reactivity and recovery. In Study 1, first-year students (N=101) completed 9 days of experience sampling (10 surveys/day) as they received their first-semester exam grades, and a follow-up survey 5 months later. In Study 2, participants (N=73) completed 2 days of experience sampling (60 surveys/day) before and after a Trier Social Stress Test. We investigated the association between anticipatory negative affect and the subsequent affective trajectory, investigating (1) reactivity immediately after the stressor, (2) recovery across hours (Study 2) and days (Study 1), and (3) recovery after 5 months (Study 1). Across the two studies, feeling more negative in anticipation of a stressor was either associated with increased negative affective reactivity, or unassociated with affective outcomes. These results run counter to the idea that being affectively ready for the worst has psychological benefits, suggesting that instead, anticipatory negative affect can come with affective costs

The association between the selection and effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies and psychopathological features:A daily life study

Emotion dysregulation is central to psychopathological conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD) and depression. However, the nature of emotion-regulation (ER) difficulties in the daily life of people with BPD or depressive features is still unclear. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to disentangle two different ER subprocesses in daily life, (a) selection of ER strategies and (b) the effectiveness of implementing strategies, in terms of their associations with subsequent emotional experience. We analyzed data from a three-wave, longitudinal, experience-sampling study of young adults with varying levels of psychopathological features (N = 202). BPD features were uniquely linked to the use but not altered effectiveness of several putatively adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies. Depressive features were uniquely associated with the use of putatively maladaptive strategies. These findings suggest that ER deficits in people with more BPD or depressive features may be primarily located in strategy selection rather than the implementation of those strategies

The intersection of goals to experience and express emotion

Experience and expression are orthogonal emotion dimensions: we do not always show what we feel, nor do we always feel what we show. However, the experience and expression dimensions of emotion are rarely considered simultaneously. We propose a model outlining the intersection of goals for emotion experience and expression. We suggest that these goals may be aligned (e.g., feeling and showing) or misaligned (e.g., feeling but not showing). Our model posits these states can be separated into goals to 1) experience and express, 2) experience but not express, 3) express but not experience, or 4) neither experience nor express positive and negative emotion. Considering intersections between experience and expression goals will advance understanding of emotion regulation choice and success

Neuroticism May Not Reflect Emotional Variability

A meta-analytic project using 11 experience sampling and daily diary studies of emotional functioning, with a goal to investigate the nature of the relationship between neuroticism and negative emotion variability

Emotion regulation flexibility

Our environment is in constant flux, and in response, our emotions change dynamically (Kuppens & Verduyn, 2017). Thus, when seeking to influence our emotions, we must also dynamically tune our emotion-regulation efforts. This means that successful regulation does not involve merely using particular adaptive strategies, but rather, flexibly picking the right strategy to suit ever-changing situational demands (Bonanno & Burton, 2013). This means that emotion regulation researchers must understand flexibility, often defined as systematic variation in emotion regulation processes in synchrony with the context (Aldao et al., 2015). In this chapter, we first discuss variability as a precursor to flexibility, then introduce the components of emotion regulation flexibility, and finally discuss challenges and future research directions