A Linguistic Signature of Psychological Distancing in Emotion Regulation
A Linguistic Signature of Psychological Distancing in Emotion Regulation
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DOI：
10.1037/xge0000263
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发表时间：
2017-03-01
影响因子：
4.1
通讯作者：
Somerville, Leah H.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Nook, Erik C.;Schleider, Jessica L.;Somerville, Leah H.
有效的情绪调节对心理健康和幸福至关重要，对促进这一关键技能的潜在机制的洞察是无价的。我们结合了认知语言学和基础情感科学的原理来测试一个人的语言成分的变化是否会促进有效的情绪调节。我们特别探讨了情绪调节与心理距离语言特征之间的双向关系。在研究1中，我们评估了人们在调节情绪时是否会自发地疏远他们的语言（即，将他们的词汇使用转向更少的社交性和暂时的接近性）。参与者在被动观看或主动调节自己对负面图像的情绪反应时记录下自己的想法。调节增加了社会距离和时间距离的语言标记，表现出更大语言距离的参与者是更成功的调节者。研究2颠倒了这一关系，并调查了远离语言是否会自发地调节一个人的情绪。参与者在身体、社会和时间领域使用心理上“亲近”或“疏远”的语言来描述负面形象。这三个领域的语言距离都自发地减少了消极情绪。距离语言也会跨领域“流血”（例如，时间距离会自发地产生社会距离）。这表明，一个人在一个领域的语言距离（例如，减少使用现在时态动词）会产生跨领域可测量的心理距离深层表征的变化（例如，减少使用“我”这个词）。研究结果扩展了对语言-情绪相互作用的理解，揭示了减少消极情绪的新策略。
Effective emotion regulation is critical for mental health and well-being, rendering insight into underlying mechanisms that facilitate this crucial skill invaluable. We combined principles of cognitive linguistics and basic affective science to test whether shifting components of one's language might foster effective emotion regulation. In particular, we explored bidirectional relations between emotion regulation and linguistic signatures of psychological distancing. In Study 1, we assessed whether people spontaneously distance their language (i.e., shift their word use to be less socially and temporally proximate) when regulating emotions. Participants transcribed their thoughts while either passively viewing or actively regulating their emotional responses to negative images. Regulation increased linguistic markers of social and temporal distance, and participants who showed greater linguistic distancing were more successful regulators. Study 2 reversed this relation and investigated whether distancing one's language spontaneously regulated one's emotions. Participants wrote about negative images either using psychologically "close" or "distant" language in physical, social, and temporal domains. All 3 domains of linguistic distancing spontaneously reduced negative affect. Distancing language also "bled" across domains (e.g., temporal distancing spontaneously produced social distancing). This suggests that distancing one's language in 1 domain (e.g., reducing use of present-tense verbs) produces shifts in deep representations of psychological distance that are measurable across domains (e.g., reduced use of the word "I"). Results extend understanding of language-emotion interactions and reveal novel strategies for reducing negative affect.