Although research has shown that positive emotions (PEs) can help people cope with negative events, there is not yet a systematic framework for understanding how and when they might do so. In this ...article, I propose such a framework by suggesting that PEs can play 3 roles when people attempt to regulate their emotional response to negative events. First, PEs may serve as the ultimate target of emotion regulation (ER) such that people attempt to feel better by regulating their PEs regardless of whether they also regulate their negative emotions. Second, PEs may serve as a mediator of ER such that people regulate their PEs in order to satisfy their ultimate goal of regulating their negative emotions. Third, PEs may serve as a moderator of ER such that incidental PEs (those occurring from some other source besides ER) may moderate people's ability to regulate positive or negative emotions. I also discuss how to determine what roles that PEs are playing in a given instance of ER, how PEs may sometimes not help ER, and how this framework contributes to the burgeoning literature on regulatory flexibility by providing different roles of PEs in ER that may be more or less effective for different people and circumstances.
A significant proportion of people in remission from depression will experience a recurrence of depression. One theoretical mechanism for this recurrence is that with each additional episode of ...depression, people become more sensitive to the deleterious effects of less powerful stressors. We propose that research on resilience – the ability to adapt to and recover from stress – can inform interventions to prevent recurrence in people in remission. We conceptualize resilience as a dynamic process that may be deficient in people in remission from depression, rather than as a static personal quality that is unattainable to people who have experienced psychopathology. The three aspects of resilience that we suggest are the most important to target to prevent recurrence are (1) improving stress recovery from minor daily stressors that may aid remitted people in coping with major stressors, (2) increasing positivity, like promoting positive emotions during stress, and (3) and training flexibility—the ability to identify different demands in the environment and employ the appropriate coping strategy to meet those demands. We offer suggestions for the appropriate assessment of changes in resilience in remitted people and provide some examples of effective resilience interventions.
•Resilience may be improved in people in remission from depression.•We present targets for improving resilience in remitted people.•We present appropriate assessments of potential changes in resilience.•We review several examples of validated resilience interventions.
Abstract Background Little work has examined the relation between interoceptive awareness and symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Existing research suggests that depressed individuals ...exhibit impaired heartbeat perception, though the results of this research have been equivocal. Importantly, depressed participants in these studies have had comorbid anxiety disorders, making it difficult to draw inferences about interoceptive awareness in MDD. The current study addresses this issue by assessing heartbeat perception in depressed women without current anxiety disorders and exploring the relation between interoception and perturbations in both affective intensity and decision making, components of MDD postulated to be related to bodily awareness. Methods Depressed women without concurrent anxiety disorders ( n =25) and never-disordered controls ( n =36) performed a heartbeat perception task. Participants completed the self-report Affect Intensity Measure (AIM), and decision-making difficulty was assessed in MDD participants using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. Results Depressed women exhibited poorer heartbeat perception accuracy than did control participants. Impaired accuracy in MDD participants was associated with reduced positive affectivity and difficulty in decision making. Limitations Our sample was composed exclusively of females and was heterogeneous with respect to treatment status, thereby limiting our ability to generalize results to depressed males and to exclude the contribution of exogenous factors to the observed group differences. Conclusions Results of this study suggest that for depressed individuals without anxiety comorbidities, disrupted perception of bodily responses reduces both the experience of positive arousal and the ability to use interoceptive feedback to inform decision making.
Objective
Strategy–situation fit, or contextual coping, posits that the physical and psychological demands associated with stressors are determined in part by the characteristics of each stress ...situation and may therefore require the use of different coping strategies. In this review, we discuss strategy–situation fit in the context of both natural and manmade disasters as it pertains to positivity and, ultimately, resilience after disasters.
Method
We reviewed the relevant literature on positivity and coping with disasters using a contextual approach.
Results
We identified several disaster‐related characteristics (i.e., cause of disaster, temporal characteristics of disasters, and degree of resource loss) that might influence the efficacy of positive coping strategies. We then discussed strategies that could be useful for promoting resilience with regard to these different characteristics.
Conclusion
This work represents an initial step in conceptualizing disaster resiliency within the framework of contextual positive coping. Recommendations for future avenues of research are discussed.
The early part of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) was a chronic stressor that led to decreased life satisfaction, increased psychopathology, and decreased social interaction, making it important ...to study coping strategies that stimulate increases in emotional well-being. Previous research has demonstrated that disengagement coping may be beneficial in scenarios where engagement coping is too difficult or not possible. We hypothesized that disengagement coping would be related to good emotional well-being (high positive emotions and/or perceived control, lower negative emotions and/or stress), with distraction (taking a break from a stressor) related to better emotional well-being than is avoidance (avoiding thoughts and feelings associated with a stressor).
Using a daily reconstruction method that represents a "day in the life" of people in the United States during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, we assessed people's (N = 329) activities, their intention to distract from or avoid the stressor during these activities, emotions, and thoughts about and motivation to deal with COVID.
Between-subjects' analyses revealed that habitual distraction did not predict any outcomes, while habitual avoidance related to poorer emotional well-being. Within-subject analyses, however, demonstrated that engaging in distraction (and to a smaller extent, avoidance) was associated with better concurrent emotional well-being and less thinking about COVID. Furthermore, the intent to distract/avoid was more reliable in predicting emotional outcomes than was the activity type.
These findings suggest that disengagement from stress can be an adaptive coping behavior during global pandemics and possibly other chronic stressors with similar attributes.
Background: Positive distraction involves distracting oneself from a stressor by thinking about or engaging in activities that induce positive emotion. We hypothesized that although it is a ...disengagement coping strategy, which have been historically viewed as maladaptive (e.g., avoidance), positive distraction can be an adaptive version that predicts positive outcomes.
Design: To test this hypothesis, we developed a scale to measure positive and neutral distraction (distracting oneself by engaging in daily activities) in response to chronic stressors in 3 samples (MTurk1, N = 206; undergraduate, N = 376; MTurk2, N = 200). We then correlated the use of these strategies with outcomes in these samples and another undergraduate sample (N = 370).
Results: Exploratory SEM confirmed that the scale consists of two factors corresponding to positive and neutral distraction, which were positively correlated with avoidance. However, unlike avoidance, positive distraction (and to a lesser degree neutral distraction) was related to positive outcomes such as higher well-being and positive emotions, and fewer depressive symptoms especially when controlling for avoidance.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that positive distraction can be an adaptive disengagement coping strategy for chronic stressors when controlling for avoidance and should be incorporated into coping studies and interventions.
In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a large portion of the world into quarantine, leading to an extensive period of stress making it necessary to explore regulatory techniques that are ...effective at stimulating long-lasting positive emotion. Previous research has demonstrated that anticipating positive events produces increases in positive emotion during discrete stressors. We hypothesized that state and trait positive anticipation during the COVID-19 pandemic would be associated with increased positive emotions. We assessed how often participants thought about a future positive/negative/neutral event, activity, or goal through a daily reconstruction method that represented a "day in the life" of people in the United States during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of multi-level modeling and mediational analyses demonstrated that higher optimism, one form of trait positive anticipation, was related to higher state positive anticipation, which was in turn related to higher positive emotions during the current episode, which persisted to the next episode. In addition, both optimism and state positive anticipation were related to adaptive responses to the pandemic. These findings suggest that anticipation of future emotional experiences and hopefulness for the future can be a powerful predictor of positive emotions during global pandemics and perhaps other similar chronic stressors.
Field studies and laboratory experiments have documented that a key component of resilience is emotional flexibility--the ability to respond flexibly to changing emotional circumstances. In the ...present study we tested the hypotheses that resilient people exhibit emotional flexibility: (a) in response to frequently changing emotional stimuli and (b) across multiple modalities of emotional responding. As participants viewed a series of emotional pictures, we assessed their self-reported affect, facial muscle activity, and startle reflexes. Higher trait resilience predicted more divergent affective and facial responses (corrugator and zygomatic) to positive versus negative pictures. Thus, compared with their low-resilient counterparts, resilient people appear to be able to more flexibly match their emotional responses to the frequently changing emotional stimuli. Moreover, whereas high-trait-resilient participants exhibited divergent startle responses to positive versus negative pictures regardless of the valence of the preceding trial, low-trait-resilient participants did not exhibit divergent startle responses when the preceding picture was negative. High-trait-resilient individuals, therefore, appear to be better able than are their low-resilient counterparts to either switch or maintain their emotional responses depending on whether the emotional context changes. The present findings broaden our understanding of the mechanisms underlying resilience by demonstrating that resilient people are able to flexibly change their affective and physiological responses to match the demands of frequently changing environmental circumstances.
Negative interpersonal events, such as close relationship conflicts, can threaten one's affective and social well-being. To improve affect and to maintain valuable relationships, individuals could ...select different reappraisal tactics. One could use positive reappraisal to find potential benefits of the event (e.g. "This conflict helps our relationship grow."), or use minimising reappraisal to decrease the perceived impact of event (e.g. "This is no big deal."). These two tactics target distinct appraisal dimensions: valence versus significance. We investigated whether these two reappraisals would show similar or different profiles of affective and social effects in the context of close relationship conflicts. Study 1 was based on a sample of 90 Chinese younger adults. Study 2 was based on a sample of 237 American adults (156 MTurk workers and 81 undergraduates combined). Across two studies, both reappraisals effectively improved affect in response to a recalled conflict. Minimising reappraisal group showed significantly increased affect and relationship satisfaction (Study 1&2), but decreased conflict resolution motivation (Study 2) across time. Positive reappraisal group, on the other hand, showed less pronounced increases in positive affect but increased conflict resolution self-efficacy across time (Study 1&2). We discuss these findings by highlighting within-reappraisal variation and potential trade-offs in pursuing affective and social regulation goals.
Temporal Orientation of Positive Reappraisal Vlasenko, Valeriia V.; Tucker, Wesley K.; Waugh, Christian E.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.),
08/2024, Letnik:
24, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although it is well established that positive reappraisal-changing the way one thinks about an emotional event to feel more positive about it-is an effective emotion regulation strategy, researchers ...have only recently begun to characterize the relative utility and effectiveness of different forms of positive reappraisal. We propose that temporal orientation-thinking about the past versus the future-may be one particularly useful characterization of positive reappraisal. In three studies, participants were instructed to use positive reappraisal to feel better about a stressor and we either measured (Studies 1 and 3) or manipulated (Study 2) the orientation of those reappraisals to the future or to the past. The findings demonstrated that people tended to use reappraisals that were more future oriented than past oriented (Studies 1 and 3). In addition, although both forms of reappraisals were effective at regulating emotion, future-oriented reappraisals were slightly more effective at increasing positive emotion (Study 2) and higher in perceived effectiveness (Study 3). Lastly, people generated reappraisals that were more oriented to the past in response to stressors that were familiar (Studies 1 and 3) and/or chronic (Study 3); however, the future orientation of their reappraisals was insensitive to the characteristics of the stressors. Our results suggest that there is a clear distinction in the utility and effectiveness of past-oriented and future-oriented forms of positive reappraisal, suggesting that this novel characterization of positive reappraisals by their temporal orientation may prove critical for more fully understanding the effectiveness of positive reappraisal for regulating emotion.
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