Research indicates that a subtle shift in language—silently referring to oneself using one’s own name and non–first-person-singular pronouns (i.e., distanced self-talk)—promotes emotion regulation. ...Yet it remains unclear whether the efficacy of distanced self-talk depends on the intensity of the negative experience reflected on and whether the benefits extend to emotionally vulnerable individuals. Two high-powered experiments addressed these issues. Distanced as opposed to immersed self-talk reduced emotional reactivity when people reflected on negative experiences that varied in their emotional intensity. These findings held when participants focused on future and past autobiographical events and when they scored high on individual difference measures of emotional vulnerability. The results also generalized across various types of negative events. These findings illuminate the functionality of language for allowing people to regulate their emotions when reflecting on negative experiences across the spectrum of emotional intensity and highlight the need for future research to examine the clinical implications of this technique.
Emotional support is critical to well-being, but the factors that determine whether support attempts succeed or fail are incompletely understood. Using data from more than 1 million support ...interactions enacted within an online environment, we showed that emotional-support attempts are more effective when there is synchrony in the behavior of support providers and recipients reflective of shared psychological understanding. Benefits of synchrony in language used and semantic content conveyed were apparent in immediate measures of support impact (recipient ratings of support effectiveness and expressions of gratitude), as well as delayed measures of lasting change in the emotional impact of stressful life situations (recipient ratings of emotional recovery made at a 1-hr delay). These findings identify linguistic synchrony as a process underlying successful emotional support and provide direction for future work investigating support processes enacted via linguistic behaviors.
Although research shows higher levels of perceived academic control are associated with academic adjustment in the first year of university, little is known about how changes in perceived control ...over multiple years relate to longitudinal university dropout and grades. Thus, our 3-year study (N = 1,007) examined whether changes in perceived control predicted university dropout and whether this relationship was mediated by university grade point average (GPA). Latent change score models showed that although first-year perceived control declined on average, there were high levels of variability between students, so that perceptions of control increased for some students. Discrete time survival analysis models showed that such positive changes in perceived control were associated with reduced dropout rates. Increases in perceived control also predicted higher subsequent university grades. Finally, we confirmed that the relationship between perceived control and dropout was mediated by university grades. Findings advance the literature in highlighting longitudinal linkages between perceived academic control and university grades and their influence on subsequent dropout. Implications for instructors and institutions to support adequate control perceptions, especially in the first academic year, are discussed.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
The present study focuses on students' control beliefs over their academic outcomes and its relevance for university dropout and grades. Results suggest an overall decline of students' control beliefs within a 3-year degree program, and this decline was associated with a higher risk of university dropout and poorer university grades. These findings highlight the importance of developing evidence-based methods to support students' control beliefs.
Summary
Drawing from the social cognitive theory of self‐regulation, we develop a model linking experienced incivility to emotional exhaustion and supportive behaviors via self‐blame, with observed ...incivility experienced by coworkers as a first‐stage moderator and trait emotional control as a second‐stage moderator. We contend that employees will experience self‐blame if they perceive themselves to be distinct targets of incivility (i.e., observed incivility experienced by others is low). Self‐blame can potentially trigger prosocial responses for improving the situation, but self‐blaming targets rarely respond in a prosocial manner because rational attempts to do so are thwarted by deleterious negative emotions accompanying self‐blame. We argue that trait emotional control provides resources for managing these negative emotions to unleash a bright side of self‐blame, such that the relation of self‐blame with prosocial responses (i.e., being supportive to coworkers) will be more positive and the relation of self‐blame with emotional exhaustion will be less positive for individuals with high (vs. low) trait emotional control. Multiwave data collected from a sample of 220 police officers largely support our hypotheses, indicating that the indirect relation of experienced incivility with supportive behaviors via self‐blame is strongest at lower levels of observed incivility and higher levels of emotional control.
Voice highlights important issues in the workplace, but it may be malfunctional if recipients do not possess the adequate mastery to act on the feedback received. Our research draws on the control ...value theory of emotions to explain how appraisals and affective processes shape employees' adaptive or maladaptive responses to challenge‐oriented voices from their coworkers. We contend that constructive (destructive) coworker voice activates a positive (negative) affective state more strongly in recipients who perceive higher (vs. lower) behavioral control because they will attribute greater personal responsibility over the voice content. We also expect the affective states to predict interpersonal citizenship behavior and work withdrawal behavior more strongly in recipients with lower (vs. higher) emotional control due to their greater susceptibility to the influences of affective states. The results from three‐wave, multi‐source data collected from 307 insurance sales representatives support most of our hypotheses, except that perceived behavioral control does not moderate the link between destructive coworker voice and employee negative affective state. The findings extend voice literature by taking a recipient perspective on how and why they react differently to constructive or destructive coworker voice, and offer practical suggestions for facilitating optimal behavioral responses to coworker voice in an applied setting.
Changes at work are often accompanied with the threat of, or actual, resource loss. Through an experiment, we investigated the detrimental effect of the threat of resource loss on adaptive task ...performance. Self-regulation (i.e., task focus and emotion control) was hypothesized to buffer the negative relationship between the threat of resource loss and adaptive task performance. Adaptation was conceptualized as relearning after a change in task execution rules. Threat of resource loss was manipulated for 100 participants undertaking an air traffic control task. Using discontinuous growth curve modeling, 2 kinds of adaptation-transition adaptation and reacquisition adaptation-were differentiated. The results showed that individuals who experienced the threat of resource loss had a stronger drop in performance (less transition adaptation) and a subsequent slower recovery (less reacquisition adaptation) compared with the control group who experienced no threat. Emotion control (but not task focus) moderated the relationship between the threat of resource loss and transition adaptation. In this respect, individuals who felt threatened but regulated their emotions performed better immediately after the task change (but not later on) compared with those individuals who felt threatened and did not regulate their emotions as well. However, later on, relearning (reacquisition adaptation) under the threat of resource loss was facilitated when individuals concentrated on the task at hand.
•How individuals evaluate their emotions has consequences for emotional functioning.•Individuals endorsing irrational beliefs showed decreases in negative emotions.•Also, they showed more negative ...meta-emotions and poorer perceived emotional control.•Individuals endorsing rational beliefs also showed decreases in negative emotions.•Approaching emotions with acceptance was beneficial in the recovery period.
The current study aimed at investigating the effect of endorsing different beliefs about emotions (BAEs) on the emotional response and perceived control of emotions. Two hundred and fourteen individuals were randomly assigned to one of four groups. One group was instructed to endorse irrational BAEs, one rational BAEs, one to approach emotions with acceptance, and a control group received no specific instructions. Participants further watched an emotion-provoking film and applied the instructions assigned to their group while their negative emotions, skin conductance, respiratory rate, heart rate, negative meta-emotions, and perceived emotional control were assessed. Results showed that after the film clip, individuals endorsing irrational and rational BAEs showed significant decreases in negative emotions compared to the control group. However, individuals endorsing irrational BAEs reported more negative meta-emotions and poorer perceived emotional control. Further, after a recovery period, only individuals endorsing rational BAEs and those endorsing an acceptance-based approach showed significant decreases in negative emotions. No between-groups differences were observed on physiological measures. Thus, current results show that how individuals evaluate their emotions has important consequences for emotional functioning and instructing them to endorse rational BAEs might be beneficial when encountering emotional situations.
It is well established that emotion plays a key role in human social and economic decision making. The recent literature on emotion regulation (ER), however, highlights that humans typically make ...efforts to control emotion experiences. This leaves open the possibility that decision effects previously attributed to acute emotion may be a consequence of acute ER strategies such as cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In Study 1, we manipulated ER of laboratory-induced fear and disgust, and found that the cognitive reappraisal of these negative emotions promotes risky decisions (reduces risk aversion) in the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and is associated with increased performance in the prehunch/hunch period of the Iowa Gambling Task. In Study 2, we found that naturally occurring negative emotions also increase risk aversion in Balloon Analogue Risk Task, but the incidental use of cognitive reappraisal of emotions impedes this effect. We offer evidence that the increased effectiveness of cognitive reappraisal in reducing the experience of emotions underlies its beneficial effects on decision making.
This research examined the relationship between individual differences in working memory capacity and the self-regulation of emotional expression and emotional experience. Four studies revealed that ...people higher in working memory capacity suppressed expressions of negative emotion (Study 1) and positive emotion (Study 2) better than did people lower in working memory capacity. Furthermore, compared to people lower in working memory capacity, people higher in capacity more capably appraised emotional stimuli in an unemotional manner and thereby experienced (Studies 3 and 4) and expressed (Study 4) less emotion in response to those stimuli. These findings indicate that cognitive ability contributes to the control of emotional responding.
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