The present article reviews modern research on the psychology of emotion regulation. Emotion regulation determines the offset of emotional responding and is thus distinct from emotional sensitivity, ...which determines the onset of emotional responding. Among the most viable categories for classifying emotion-regulation strategies are the targets and functions of emotion regulation. The emotion-generating systems that are targeted in emotion regulation include attention, knowledge, and bodily responses. The functions of emotion regulation include satisfying hedonic needs, supporting specific goal pursuits, and facilitating the global personality system. Emotion-regulation strategies are classified in terms of their targets and functions and relevant empirical work is reviewed. Throughout this review, emotion regulation emerges as one of the most far-ranging and influential processes at the interface of cognition and emotion.
During psychotherapy, patient and therapist tend to spontaneously synchronize their vocal pitch, bodily movements, and even their physiological processes. In the present article, we consider how this ...pervasive phenomenon may shed new light on the therapeutic relationship- or alliance- and its role within psychotherapy. We first review clinical research on the alliance and the multidisciplinary area of interpersonal synchrony. We then integrate both literatures in the Interpersonal Synchrony (In-Sync) model of psychotherapy. According to the model, the alliance is grounded in the coupling of patient and therapist's brains. Because brains do not interact directly, movement synchrony may help to establish inter-brain coupling. Inter-brain coupling may provide patient and therapist with access to another's internal states, which facilitates common understanding and emotional sharing. Over time, these interpersonal exchanges may improve patients' emotion-regulatory capacities and related therapeutic outcomes. We discuss the empirical assessment of interpersonal synchrony and review preliminary research on synchrony in psychotherapy. Finally, we summarize our main conclusions and consider the broader implications of viewing psychotherapy as the product of two interacting brains.
Prior experiments indicated that reading literary fiction improves mentalising performance relative to reading popular fiction, non-fiction, or not reading. However, the experiments had relatively ...small sample sizes and hence low statistical power. To address this limitation, the present authors conducted four high-powered replication experiments (combined N = 1006) testing the causal impact of reading literary fiction on mentalising. Relative to the original research, the present experiments used the same literary texts in the reading manipulation; the same mentalising task; and the same kind of participant samples. Moreover, one experiment was pre-registered as a direct replication. In none of the experiments did reading literary fiction have any effect on mentalising relative to control conditions. The results replicate earlier findings that familiarity with fiction is positively correlated with mentalising. Taken together, the present findings call into question whether a single session of reading fiction leads to immediate improvements in mentalising.
Although emotion regulation has traditionally been conceived as a deliberative process, there is growing evidence that many emotion-regulation processes operate at implicit levels. This special issue ...of Cognition and Emotion showcases recent advances in theorising and empirical research on implicit emotion regulation. Implicit emotion regulation can be broadly defined as any process that operates without the need for conscious supervision or explicit intentions, and aims at modifying the quality, intensity, or duration of an emotional response. Implicit emotion regulation is likely to be pervasive in everyday life and may contribute considerably to the effectiveness of emotion regulation. Research in this area has developed several valid methods for measuring and manipulating implicit emotion. The contributions to this special issue highlight the significance of implicit emotion regulation in psychological adaptation, goal-directed behaviour, interpersonal behaviour, personality functioning, and mental health.
Although replications are vital to scientific progress, psychologists rarely engage in systematic replication efforts. In this article, we consider psychologists' narrative approach to scientific ...publications as an underlying reason for this neglect and propose an incentive structure for replications within psychology. First, researchers need accessible outlets for publishing replications. To accomplish this, psychology journals could publish replication reports in files that are electronically linked to reports of the original research. Second, replications should get cited. This can be achieved by cociting replications along with original research reports. Third, replications should become a valued collaborative effort. This can be realized by incorporating replications in teaching programs and by stimulating adversarial collaborations. The proposed incentive structure for replications can be developed in a relatively simple and cost-effective manner. By promoting replications, this incentive structure may greatly enhance the dependability of psychology's knowledge base.
One of the enduring missions of personality science is to unravel what it takes to become a fully functioning person. In the present article, the authors address this matter from the perspectives of ...self‐determination theory (SDT) and personality systems interactions (PSI) theory. SDT (a) is rooted in humanistic psychology; (b) has emphasized a first‐person perspective on motivation and personality; (c) posits that the person, supported by the social environment, naturally moves toward growth through the satisfaction of basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. PSI theory (a) is rooted in German volition psychology; (b) has emphasized a third‐person perspective on motivation and personality; and (c) posits that a fully functioning person can form and enact difficult intentions and integrate new experiences, and that such competencies are facilitated by affect regulation. The authors review empirical support for SDT and PSI theory, their convergences and divergences, and how the theories bear on recent empirical research on internalization, vitality, and achievement flow. The authors conclude that SDT and PSI theory offer complementary insights into developing a person's full potential.
Since March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing efforts to contain its spread have caused major problems with public health, along with social and economic disruptions. This Special Issue ...addresses how coping with the pandemic has been shaped by the interplay between cognition and emotion. The various contributions to this Special Issue explore the impacts of the pandemic on: (a) How people were confronted with new risks and realities; (b) Active processes of emotional resilience and ruminative coping; and c) Moral decision-making. Taken together, this work shows how research on cognition and emotion can illuminate the social and emotional strains of the pandemic, while helping to identify risk factors that exacerbate these problems and pointing to ways to successfully address and mitigate these problems, such as emotion regulation, social support, and perspective taking. The editorial closes by briefly reporting on the present state of the journal and changes in the editorial team.
Objective
The social present is a novel descriptor of dyadic nowness and social sharing, extending research on individual nowness (James's 1890 specious present) to the interpersonal and ...intersubjective domain. We wished to connect this descriptor to personality attributes.
Method
We define the social present by the duration of significant nonverbal synchrony, based on the phenomenon of movement synchrony that generally emerges in social interactions. It is thus an implicit and objective measure that can be implemented by automated video analyses. In this study, 168 healthy participants were invited to verbal conversations in same‐sex dyads. We analyzed the associations of the social present with personality attributes and interaction types (competition, cooperation, fun task).
Results
The average duration of the social present was 6.0 seconds, highest in competitive interactions and in male‐male dyads. People with higher Openness to Experience, higher avoidant attachment, and lower narcissistic interpersonal styles showed extended social present in their interactions.
Conclusions
The concept of the social present extends personality attributes to the interpersonal domain and to intersubjectivity. The social present may be computed based on movement synchrony but also prosodic or physiological synchronies. We foresee implications for health‐related interactions such as psychotherapy, where therapeutic presence is an essential property of alliance.
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