EMOTION REGULATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

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DESCRIPTION (Applicant's abstract): Emotions reflect our appraisals of situations and incline us to respond to these situations in particular ways. However, appraisals may be modified, and emotional response tendencies may be overridden. These emotion regulatory processes permit us to manage our emotions, and influence which emotions we have and how these emotions are expressed. For decades, emotion regulation in adulthood has been discussed in two largely unconnected literatures. One has emphasized the positive consequences of emotional control in promoting psychological well-being. The other literature has focused on potential health dangers of controlling emotions. Are mental and physical consequences of emotion regulation in conflict, as these literatures suggest? To resolve this issue, seven studies are proposed to examine the affective (Aim 1), cognitive (Aim 2), and social (Aim 3) consequences of emotion regulation. These studies will also explore individual differences in emotion and emotion regulation (Aim 4), and assess the implications of such differences for the adjustment to the freshman year of college (Aim 5). Throughout, the focus will be on two forms of emotion regulation. The first, antecedent-focused emotion regulation, is exemplified by reappraisal, in which one reinterprets one's situation so as to reduce its emotional impact. The second, response-focused emotion regulation, is exemplified by suppression, in which one inhibits emotion-expressive behavior. Proposed studies will use multiple sources of information (direct measurement, self reports, informant reports), multiple response measures (experiential, behavioral, physiological, cognitive), and multiple target emotions ((e.g., amusement, anger, disgust, sadness). The broad, long-term objective of this program of research is to understand the role of emotion regulation in mental and physical health. This research will test the notion that "shutting down" an emotion at the front end (reappraisal) has different consequences from "shutting down" an emotion that has already generated powerful response tendencies (suppression), and thereby lay the foundation for new clinical interventions promoting healthy forms of emotion regulation for problems ranging from depression to marital conflict.