Downregulation of Anger by Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions (MCII) (original) (raw)
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Effective Regulation of Affect: An Action Control Perspective on Emotion Regulation.
The present review adopts an action control perspective on emotion regulation, contextualising the gap between emotion control goals (e.g., I want to remain calm) and emotional outcomes (e.g., anger, anxiety, and aggression) in terms of the broader literature on goal pursuit. We propose that failure to effectively regulate emotions can result from difficulties with the self-regulatory tasks of (i) identifying the need to regulate, (ii) deciding whether and how to regulate, and (iii) enacting a regulation strategy. Next, we review evidence that a technique traditionally associated with regulating behavioural goals (forming implementation intentions or ‘if-then’ planning) can help to overcome these difficulties. Meta-analysis indicated that forming implementation intentions is effective in modifying emotional outcomes, with a large effect relative to no regulation instructions (k = 21, N = 1,306 d+ = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.61 to 1.20) and a medium-sized effect relative to goal intention instructions (k = 29, N = 1,208, d+ = 0.53, 95% CI = 0.42 to 0.65). Our conclusion is that research on emotion regulation might benefit from an action control perspective and the interventions that this perspective offers.
Limiting fear and anger responses to anger expressions
International Journal of Conflict Management, 2019
Purpose The purpose of this study is to test how individuals’ emotion reactions (fear vs anger) to expressed anger influence their intended conflict management styles. It investigates two interventions for managing their reactions: hot vs cold processing and enhancing conflict self-efficacy. Design/methodology/approach Hypotheses were tested in two experiments using an online simulation. After receiving an angry or a neutral message from a coworker, participants either completed a cognitive processing task (E1) or a conflict self-efficacy task (E2), and then self-reported their emotions, behavioral activation/inhibition and intended conflict management styles. Findings Fear is associated with enhanced behavioral inhibition, which results in greater intentions to avoid and oblige and lower intentions to dominate. Anger is associated with enhanced behavioral activation, which results in greater intentions to integrate and dominate, as well as lower intentions to avoid and oblige. Cold...
BMC Psychology
Background The present study aimed to evaluate the self-regulatory properties of anger on the performance of individuals under various motivational dispositions using an experimental design. Methods The participants were 99 university students who participated in response to extra credit. The performance of the participants was evaluated using the Tower of Hanoi task. Their anger was measured using a facial expression recognition system and arousal was assessed using a heart-rate monitoring device. Two motivational dispositions were assessed: performance goals with normative evaluative standards and performance goals with a focus on outcomes. Results The results indicated that a nonlinear function explained the relationship between anger, arousal, and achievement under different goal conditions. Specifically, the Cusp Catastrophe Model showed that anger levels beyond a critical point were associated with the unpredictability of performance during the normative goal condition, sugges...
Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2019
The ability to regulate anger facilitates harmonious interactions with strangers, colleagues, friends, and romantic partners. We review the influence of four emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal, suppression, angry rumination, and mindfulness) on subjective anger experience, cardiovascular reactivity, and aggressive behavior. All studies included a real or implied social interaction (e.g., with a fictitious participant). We included research on individual differences in emotion regulation as well as experiments that manipulated emotion regulation strategies. The evidence suggests that cognitive reappraisal and mindfulness can buffer anger-related responses in interpersonal contexts. Angry rumination perpetuates anger and aggression. The effects of suppression are mixed. Our review highlights the need for additional research into the extent to which emotion regulation strategies influence provoked anger and aggression in different interpersonal contexts.
Anuario de Psicología
The purpose of this research was to develop and validate a new instrument to assess the regulation of anger and sadness in interpersonal situations, covering a wide range of emotion regulation strategies. Two studies were carried out, both of them using purposively selected samples. In Study 1 we created a set of items based on previous studies of emotion regulation, applied a preliminary version of this scale to a pilot sample of undergraduate students (n = 400), and then selected, using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), the best 28 items to include in a brief version of the instrument, the Scale of Emotion Regulation in Interpersonal Situations (SERIS). In Study 2 we tested the resulting scale in a new sample of undergraduate students (n = 259) by means of confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 validated the factor structure identified in the EFA. Results showed that the scale has adequate internal consistency and psychometric properties. The new scale also identifies the strategies that are most frequently used in the anger and sadness scenarios, showing differential patterns which are consistent with previous literature on emotion regulation. We discuss the limitations of the study and acknowledge that future studies addressing the scale's convergent and discriminant validity are now required. * Acknowledgments: This research was supported by the National University of Mar del Plata through the Perfeccionamiento grant for the project Diferencias según grupo de edad de las características de la percepción temporal futura, las metas vitales y las estrategias de regulación de la ira y la tristeza en escenarios intrafamiliares. We would also like to thank all participants for their collaboration.
The Effects of Analytical Rumination, Reappraisal, and Distraction on Anger Experience
2012
The manner in which individuals recall negative life events has important affective consequences. The present experiment investigated the effects of emotion regulation strategies on anger experience. One hundred and twenty-one undergraduates recalled an anger-inducing memory and were instructed to engage in either analytical rumination, cognitive reappraisal, or distraction for 20 minutes. In the remaining (control) condition, participants were instructed to write about their thoughts but were not given any emotion regulation instructions. Rumination maintained anger, whereas participants in the remaining conditions reported decreased anger following the writing task. Our results suggest that reappraisal facilitates adaptive processing of anger-inducing memories and distraction facilitates rapid reductions in anger experience. These findings have implications for the management of clinical populations that commonly experience difficulty with anger regulation.
Cognition & emotion, 2016
To succeed in self-regulation, people need to believe that it is possible to change behaviour and they also need to use effective means to enable such a change. We propose that this also applies to emotion regulation. In two studies, we found that people were most successful in emotion regulation, the more they believed emotions can be controlled and the more they used an effective emotion regulation strategy - namely, cognitive reappraisal. Cognitive reappraisal moderated the link between beliefs about the controllability of emotion and success in emotion regulation, when reappraisal was measured as a trait (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2). Such moderation was found when examining the regulation of disgust elicited by emotion-inducing films (Study 1), and the regulation of anger elicited by real political events (Study 2). We discuss the implications of our findings for research and practice in emotion regulation.