Week 7, Day 2

Question 1

emotion regulation

Answer 1

our attempts to influence our emotions, when they have them and how they are expressed

Question 2

Modal model of emotion regulation (Gross)

Answer 2

1. First ppl to look at it looked through this model
2. Emotions are irrational and we have to control them
3. Modal model of emotion regulation (Gross)

Question 3

does emotional suppression work?

Answer 3

1. Try not to let feelings show when you watch videos
2. Looking at change in HR and BP sorta things
3. Looking at the different conditions
   
   1. Amusement: doing a lot more physiological work
   2. Neutral: doesn’t make diff
   3. Sadness: start to see physiological arousal go up
4. CONCLUSION: suppression of any kind of emotion can have neg physiological consequences

Question 4

Reappraisal: Experiment 1: changes in disgust

Answer 4

1. Antecedent-focused:
   
   • Reappraisal: interpreting potentially emotion-relevant stimuli in unemotional terms
2. Response-focused:
   
   • Suppression: inhibiting emotion-expressive behavior while emotionally aroused
     
     • Change your responses
3. Methods:
   
   • Participants watched a disgust-eliciting film while:
     
     • Reappraising
     • Suppressing
     • Watching
   • Try to think about it in a way that you don’t react at all
4. Results
   
   • Self report: showed less emotion
   • Skin conductivity: suppression seems to be doing a neg physiological response where the other two really don’t show change
5. Conclusion: SUPPRESSION IS NOT GOOD?

Question 5

Reappraisal during stress

Answer 5

1. Can we actually reappraise? Hard to make ourselves really see the world differently. It’s more helpful when someone else can do it for us.
2. Method:
   
   • Prior to a stress task, 50 subjs were randomly assigned to one of three conditions:
     
     • Reappraisal: instructed that arousal is functional and aids performance
     • Ignore external cues: instructed that the best way to reduce nervousness and improve outcomes is to ignore the source of the stress (told to look at an X placed to the left of the evaluators)
     • No intervention control group
3. Results
   
   • Do you perceive that you have the resources/ capability to do the task?
   • Reappraisal felt most like they had enough resources to do the task
   • Their body wasn’t totally overwhelmed in reappraisal group: lower threat response but higher challenge response

Question 6

Neural Underpinnings of Reappraisal

Answer 6

1. What’s going on during appraisal in the brain
   
   • shown different trials: either distressing images or told to reappraise and then see the pic
   • inc activity seen in amygdala
   • take home: ppl in reappraising position are processing image in less threatening way
     
     • seen across multiple emo reg processing
   • more activity in PFC
     
     • likely b/c more important to inhibit things like regions in amygdala
       
       • more inc in PFC, less in emo based regions (normal trends)

Question 7

Expressive Writing Studies

Answer 7

1. Write about traumatic/emotional experiences
2. 3-5 sessions
3. 15-20 minutes/ session
4. Health benefits:
   
   • Fewer doctor visits
   • Improved immune function
   • Reduced BP
   • Improved mood
   • Reduced depressive symptoms
   • Greater psychological well-being
5. Why does writing help?
   
   • Disclosure
     
     • Inhibiting emotional experience is hard at work
     • Disclosure reduces the stress of inhibition
     • But: writing about a trauma that others know about was just as helpful as writing about one that had been kept secret; so it’s not the whole picture
6. Cognitive processing
   
   • Study: express through movement or through movement and then words
     
     • Only the movement plus writing group showed health benefits
     • IT NEEDS TO BE A LINGUISTIC WAY!!!!
   • Something important about translating experiences into language

Question 8

Affect Labeling:

Answer 8

1. Labeling emotional states or stimuli with emotional terms
2. What’s going on when we label emotional states?
   
   • Conditions: multiple but find appropriate label of affective label
   • Control: gender label control, words completely taken away
3. Results:
   
   • AMYGDALA: seeing exact same faces but not asked to label = more activity here
   • What was more act in brain when affective words compared: more in PFC
   • When looked across subjs, those with more act in PFC -> less in amygdala

Question 9

Forms of affective labeling:

Answer 9

1. Expressive writing
2. Mindfulness
   
   • “an open or receptive attention to, and awareness of, ongoing events and experience”
   • Has roots in Buddhist traditions
   • Recent interest and popularity in the West
   • Being incorporated into clinical therapies

Question 10

Mindfulness and Emotion

Answer 10

1. Recognize each emotion as it arises
2. Learn not to ID with them (“that is anger” vs “I am angry”)
   
   • Labeling
   • AND DETATCHMENT

Question 11

Neural Correlates of Mindfulness

Answer 11

Mindful Attention Awareness Scale

• When doing this labeling task, mindful people are showing less activation in amygdala
• Looks similar to actively reappriasing
• Semel and marc are looking at mindfulness at mindfulness