Emotion+Regulation


 * Emotion Regulation Chapter 6**


 * **Emotion regulation** – the strategies we use to control which emotions we have, when we have them, and how strongly we experience and express them
 * **Coping** – refers to people’s attempts to reduce negative emotion during and after a stressful event

Freud’s Ego Defense Mechanisms: An Early Taxonomy of Coping
 * Freud constructed a taxonomy of coping mechanisms
 * According to Freud, humans by their very nature have fundamental drives and desires that they cannot express in a civilized society
 * **Ego defense mechanisms** – psychological regulation strategies that serve to resolve the tension between the id and the superego, and keeping disturbing wishes and desires hidden from consciousness
 * Vaillant proposed that “psychotic” defenses such as denial are common in young children, but indicate trauma or psychopathology in adults. His “immature” category included defenses that avoid dealing with reality, such as fantasy and projection, typical of adolescents but unhealthy for adults. The “neurotic” category includes defenses such as displacement, intellectualization, reaction formation, and repression. These are most often used by adults. More “mature” defenses are suppression and sublimation and they are the healthiest, as they are intentional and/or lead to prosocial, constructive behavior.

A Process Model of Emotion Regulation
 * James Gross offered the process model of emotion regulation
 * Process model of emotion regulation – a model that organizes emotion regulation strategies according to their place in the emotion process itself
 * The process model highlights three main categories of strategies for regulating emotions.
 * **Situation-focused** are used to control the situation, either by choosing to be in one situation rather than another, or by changing the situation somehow
 * In **cognition-focused** strategies, we pay attention to certain aspects of the situation or change the way we think about the situation, in order to encourage some emotion and/or deter others
 * The third category includes **response-focused** strategies that alter the effects of emotion once they have already started

Situation-Focused Strategies
 * **Situation selection** – we decide whether or not to enter a situation that is likely to elicit a particular emotion
 * **Situation modification** – we enter the situation, but take steps to change it
 * Extreme use of situation selection limits people’s opportunities and relationships
 * Situation modification has been referred to as “active coping”
 * **Psychological inoculation** – dealing with a stressor by exposing yourself to milder versions of the stressful events

Cognition-Focused Strategies
 * Attentional control – try to avoid looking at or thinking about the thing that is causing distress
 * Dot-probe studies of attentional control emphasize people’s ability to deliberately attend to or ignore stimuli that are right in front of them
 * One difficulty with attentional control is that it takes a lot of cognitive energy
 * **Cognitive reappraisal** – thinking about an event or stimulus in a way that changes your emotional response to it
 * **Core relational themes** – the appraisal meaning of some event in terms of one’s relationship with the environment, thought to lead to experience of a “basic” emotion
 * **Cognitive restructuring** – changing the way one thinks about a major emotional issue or frequently occurring situation (a frequent goal in therapies for mood disorders like depression and anxiety)
 * One form of reappraisal is when one can just ignore the emotional aspects of a situation and focus on trivial aspects such as the physical setting or what people are wearing
 * Forgiveness of others is a kind of cognitive reappraisal. Forgiveness often includes finding some acceptable explanation for another person’s hurtful behavior.
 * One especially useful reappraisal strategy is to pay attention to a negative event, but try to interpret it in a more benign way (reinterpret the situation in a positive light)
 * **Positive reappraisal** – focusing on positive aspects of negative or challenging situations
 * **Resilient** – those who recover relatively easily from negative events

Response-Focused Strategies
 * **Catharsis** – the “release” of strong emotions by expressing them
 * Catharsis was thought to be helpful, however, it usually makes a person more upset or anxious
 * **Rumination** – thinking continuously about a problem for a long time, focusing on negative aspects of the situation instead of possible solutions
 * It is important to find a balance between dwelling on problems and not thinking about them at all
 * One of the most successful response-focused coping strategies is physical exercise. First, exercise is a distraction from the source of stress. Second, exercise improves overall health. Third, any stress readies the body for intense fight or flight action, even if the particular stressful situation does not call for physical activity. Fourth, neurotransmitters called endorphins become more active during physical exercise.
 * Relaxation exercises are good as well, such as meditation
 * **Suppressing emotional expressions** – attempting to block the behavioral expression of an emotion, such as a facial expression
 * Some people use drugs/alcohol and eating to escape their problems, but these cause more problems in the long run

The Neurobiology of Emotion Regulation
 * Much of this research has focused on the cognition-focused strategies, partly because it makes sense theoretically, and partly because cognition-focused strategies are easy to elicit in an fMRI magnet
 * **Executive control** – effortful control over cognitive processes such as attention, working memory and planning

Which Emotion Regulation Strategies Are Best?
 * There are many ways in which social support helps us deal with stressful situations
 * There are practical, problem-focused effects of social support
 * Social support also provides emotional comfort
 * The situation-focused strategies, when successful, have major advantages. If you can actually avoid or reduce the problem, there is less reason for unpleasant emotions in the first place
 * We cannot apply situation-focused approaches to every situation. If you have little control over a problem, your choices are to reappraise the situation or to try to regulate your emotional responses
 * Ideally, people shift among situation-focused, cognition-focused and response-focused strategies depending on the situation
 * Researchers have consistently found that suppressing facial displays fails to reduce the experience of negative emotion, and can actually increase physiological signs of stress
 * Reappraisal and suppression strategies also have different effects on memory
 * Once people set a reappraisal strategy in motion, they deflect the experience of negative emotion and can attend to other aspects of the situation
 * Suppressing your emotion requires constant attention, as you monitor your own behavior and think about the instruction to hide your feelings
 * Studies also suggest that suppression has a negative impact on relationships, compared with reappraisal
 * Suppressing emotion is a far from ideal regulation strategy
 * Talking or writing about a problem can have positive effects on emotional and physical health, but only if the person emphasizes resolving the problem, rather than ruminating over negative aspects of the situation
 * Studies on the long-term effects of exercise and meditation are promising
 * Certainly the habitual use of drugs, alcohol and eating is a poor method of coping with stress, especially in the long run

By Susanna Schmidt, Carla Tinti, Linda Levine and Silvia Testa
 * Appraisals, emotions and emotion regulation: An integrative approach**


 * Emotions are elicited when a person evaluates an event or situation as important for his or her well-being and central concerns
 * Five sets of emotion regulation strategies: (1) situation selection – approaching or avoiding people, places, or objects in order to regulate emotions, (2) situation modification – changing the situation so as to alter its emotional impact, (3) attentional deployment – distraction and rumination, (4) cognitive change – entailing strategies such as reappraisal which transforms the initial appraisal of the event, (5) response-focused strategies – aim at influencing physiological, experiential, or behavioral aspects of the emotional response
 * The current study investigated the links between appraisal, emotions, and regulation strategies by building a structural equation model which integrates a model of emotions evoked by differing appraisals of stressful circumstances with a model of antecedent versus response focused strategies for regulating emotions
 * They hypothesized that the appraisal process generates and shapes the intensity and quality of emotion, and that both, appraisal and the resulting emotions, influence the selection of emotion regulation strategies
 * To test these hypotheses, the current investigation examined the relations among the appraisals, emotions and emotion regulation strategies of youths preparing for their high school examination
 * Results indicate that students in this situation experienced primarily three types of emotions: frustration/powerlessness, anxiety/fear, and positive emotion
 * Consistent with appraisal theories, these emotions were related to different appraisal profiles: anxiety/fear seemed to arise when students evaluated the exam as important, their ability to cope with it as low.
 * Feelings of frustration/powerlessness seemed to arise when students evaluated the exam as important, their ability to cope with it as low and the outcome as dependent on external uncontrollable factors.
 * Finally, positive emotions seemed to arise when students evaluated the exam as important, their ability to cope with it as high, and the outcome as not dependent on external, uncontrollable factors.
 * The more students experienced anxiety/fear, the more they reported focusing on the exam, using drugs, and not being able to distance themselves from the exam.
 * The more students reported feeling frustration/powerlessness, the more they reported using suppression, distancing and drugs.
 * The more students reported feeling positive emotions, the more they reported engaging in reappraisal and problem-focused strategies.
 * Finally, seeking social support was an important strategy in this stressful situation irrespective of how the exam was appraised and the emotions it evoked.
 * Emotions are products of how people appraise their ongoing transactions with the environment
 * When an individual evaluates an event or a situation as offering important challenges or opportunities, emotional response tendencies are generated

By: Mark Muraven and Roy F. Baumeister
 * Self Regulation and Depletion of Limited Resources: Does Self-Control Resemble a Muscle?**


 * purpose: to review the idea that self-control operates like a muscle or strength. That controlling a behavior requires some inner, limited resource that is lowered after it is used.
 * **Self Control** is the exertion of control over the self by the self. It occurs when a person attempts to change the way he or she would otherwise think, feel or behave.
 * Self control is exerted when someone is following rules or immediate desires to delay gratification
 * It involves overriding urges, behaviors or desires.
 * Self control is critical to the influential distinction between automatic and controlled processes.
 * **Automatic processes** are efficient and rigid
 * **Controlled processes** are costly and flexible.
 * Self-Control strength model (Muraven, Tice and Baumeister, 1998) can be reduced by several key assumptions.
 * Self control strength is necessary for the execuitve components of self to function.
 * Self control strength is limited in the sense that a person has limited capacity for self control - people can override only a limited number of urges at the same time.
 * success or failure of self control depends on the level of self control strength
 * Acts of self control not only require the use of strength but also reduce the amount of strength available for following self control efforts.
 * Self control strength model predicts that after one difficult attempt at self control, following attempts should be less likely to succeed
 * Exposure to stress results in poorer self control performances.
 * Crowding is another possible stressor contributing to poor self control.
 * Exposure to stressful, uncontrollable situations leads to subsequent decrements in self control even after the stress itself has completely ended.
 * Dieting requires a great deal of self control
 * Negative moods influence lack of self control
 * Overall the general evidence is that after one act of self control the self-control of another unrelated behavior will worsen.
 * Learned helplessness is that a person learns from the exposure to an uncontrollable situation that outcomes generally do not rely on the action
 * Evidence that people exposed to uncontrollable stress subsequently fail at self control.
 * Successfully resisting temptation leads to impaired self-control of subsequent, unrelated behaviors.
 * Individuals who had no control over an aversive event had the same level of frustration, tension, anger and depression as individuals who could control the event.
 * Evidence suggests moods and emotional states do not mediate between uncontrollable stress and subsequent self control performances.
 * The strength model predicts that continuous exertions of self control should conform to the pattern of gradually deteriorating performance just like muscular exertion gradually deteriorates.
 * Self control shows short term fatigue effects like a muscle and shows that long term improvements are much like the improvement of muscle strength through exercise.
 * Self control strength model leads to the prediction that people should improve self control ability even after failing because the exertion of self control is more important then the outcome.
 * Coping with stress is also likely to have negative effects.
 * summarizing: basically the researchers found that practicing self-control is exhausting
 * if you exercise your self-control a little it gets fatigued, especially if you haven't used it in a while.
 * This relates to the idea that self-control is like a muscle because if you haven't worked out in a while you tend to feel sore and fatigued after or the next day

Emotion Regulation: Class Notes Strategies used to control emotions -when we have them -how strongly we experience them -how we express them

-Denial-Fantasy-Projection-Displacement-Intellectualization (Rationalism)-Reaction Formation-Repression-Suppression-Sublimation
 * Freud's Ego Defense Mechanisms**

Regulation-James Gross -regulation strategies depend on when they take place in the emotion process Process -enter situation -pay attention to certain aspects of situation -applause those aspects -experience full blown emotion
 * Process Model of Emotion**

__Process Model__ 1-situation focused=avoid situation 2-cognition focused=change what you think (silver-lining) 3-response focused=how you respond to something Which strategies work best? -exercise, relaxing and meditation
 * Situation selection
 * situation modification
 * Attentional Deployment
 * Cognitive Reappraisal
 * focusing on real, but positive (or at least neutral) interpretation of the situation ex) forgiveness, positive reappraisal (benefit finding), silver-lining
 * response modulation
 * catharsis
 * expressing feelings (downside is you are keeping those feelings alive by expressing them)
 * Exercise
 * Relaxation/ Meditation
 * Suppressing Emotion expression
 * emotional labor
 * Emotional Escape Strategies
 * Alcohol, drugs and food