Affect regulation

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Affect regulation and "affect regulation theory" are important concepts in psychiatry and psychology and in close relation with emotion regulation. However, the latter is a reflection of an individual's mood status rather than their affect. Affect regulation is the actual performance one can demonstrate in a difficult situation regardless of what their mood or emotions are. It is tightly related to the quality of executive and cognitive functions and that is what distinguishes this concept from emotion regulation. One can have a low emotional control but a high level of control on his or her affect, and therefore, demonstrate a normal interpersonal functioning as a result of intact cognition. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Contents

Theoretical frameworks and background

Since the late 19th century, several of psychology's most significant researchers have incorporated the idea of emotional control into psychological thought. The influential William James studied how a person's physiological responses impact their emotional experiences, suggesting a need for a regulation of these responses. [7]

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical research led to the introduction of ‘defence mechanisms’, cognitive responses which serve to push unwanted thoughts and emotions out of the conscious mind. This, too, seemed to suggest that people hold some sort of ability to regulate their experience of their emotions. [8]

In his studies of the human psyche, Carl Jung looked into how people manage their emotions by integrating some into their personality and suppressing others, which in turn gives us our "personas" through self-awareness. [9]

As cognitive psychology developed in the 20th century, so did research into emotional control, with it being believed that cognitive processes can enable affect regulation. This period saw techniques like ‘coping strategies’ come into the public eye as a result, as a means of managing certain medical problems, particularly those with cardiac origins. [10]

In the late 20th century, Richard S. Lazarus brought to light the theory of cognitive appraisal [11] (an individual’s subjective view of their environment and its stimuli) in understanding emotional responses, while James J. Gross introduced the Process Model of Emotion Regulation, further investigating how individuals are able to influence their own experience of their emotions through reframing situations and selectively deploying attention in order to reduce feelings of anxiety. [12]

Strategies in affect regulation

Affect regulation is carried out in a number of ways. The strategy of cognitive reappraisal has been heavily investigated, referring to the ability of an individual to alter their interpretation of a situation or event which is likely to elicit negative feelings in order to reduce or redirect its psychological impact. This is referred to as an antecedent-focused regulation as it is focused on changing the affect experienced before the emotion has developed. This can be used to reduce feelings of anxiety when facing potentially daunting events. [13]

Another well-studied strategy for the regulation of emotions is suppression, referring to the outward inhibition of an emotional response. Contrary to cognitive reappraisal, this a response-focused strategy, meaning it occurs after the inner emotion has arisen. In short, this is when one attempts to hide their inner emotions from being outwardly expressed. While suppression is socially important, recent research has connected extended emotional suppression to increases in mortality risk, particularly from cardiovascular diseases, with some connection even being made with increased cancer mortality. [14]

Mechanisms in affect regulation

Neurologically, affect regulation can be localised in the prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for emotion management. [15] The prefrontal cortex aids the control of the limbic system which is the home of the amygdala, the part of the brain which is believed to be central to the processing of our emotions. [16] This theory has been challenged, though, due to there being limited research on the amygdala’s effect on broad emotional responses.  More recent research has pointed to the dynamic nature of the amygdala, suggesting that people are able to regulate their emotions and responses based on the present situation and their own individual objectives (interplay between cognitive and emotional processes). [17]

In developmental psychology, one’s affect regulation is seen to be constantly evolving, starting in childhood. Caregivers are responsible for laying the foundations for appropriate emotional responses. [18] As children grow older, their ability to self-regulate their emotions becomes more refined as a result of social learning, conditioning and cognitive development, with family effect being the largest contributor to this. It is also believed that this process is critical in children, with dysfunctional affect regulation practices in childhood being commonly associated with mental health problems such as depression or anxiety later in life. [19]

Cultural factors

Affect management can significantly vary between cultures, as shown in more recent cross-cultural studies such as Matsumoto, Yoo, and Fontaine’s 2008 research. [20] Different cultures hold their own norms about emotional expressions, influencing the strategies of affect management people use. Many cultures, particularly those seen to be collectivist, advocate for emotional restraint, while individualistic cultures will be accepting of the open expression of emotion. People living in these two variations of culture will regulate and therefore display their emotions in dramatically different ways.

Practical applications and implications

Emotion Regulation Treatment (ERT) [21] has been utilised in the development of therapeutic practices, with recent trials being carried for Affect Regulation Treatment (ART), [22] as a distinctive practice. Helping patients master emotion and affect regulation techniques has been seen as valuable in treating mental health issues like PTSD, anxiety and depression. Teaching these techniques can help people with these issues manage their emotions more effectively, helping them experience higher levels of day-to-day wellbeing.

Outside of treatment, one’s level of affect regulation is vital in determining their emotional intelligence. This, in turn, is crucial to the construction and maintenance of a person’s relationships. People with high emotional intelligence are believed to be far better equipped in dealing with conflicts, developing stronger relationships with others and are believed to hold higher levels of empathy than the average person. [23]

In the education sector, the incorporation of affect regulation has been shown to effectively supplement student learning. Through teaching young students the tools to manage their emotions, schools can promote empathy and determination as the foundation of their pupils’ success. Pupils from schools which have incorporated Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) have been shown to have improved social and emotional skills, as well as boosted academic performance. [24]  Due to the culturally relative nature of affect regulation, it is important that it is ethically integrated into schools so as not to challenge the norms or values of varying cultures.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anxiety</span> Unpleasant state of inner turmoil over anticipated events

Anxiety is an emotion which is characterised by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response to a real threat, whereas anxiety is the anticipation of a future threat. It is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as pacing back and forth, somatic complaints, and rumination.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotion</span> Conscious subjective experience of humans

Emotions are physical and mental states brought on by neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or displeasure. There is no scientific consensus on a definition. Emotions are often intertwined with mood, temperament, personality, disposition, or creativity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mood swing</span> Extreme or rapid change in mood

A mood swing is an extreme or sudden change of mood. Such changes can play a positive part in promoting problem solving and in producing flexible forward planning, or be disruptive. When mood swings are severe, they may be categorized as part of a mental illness, such as bipolar disorder, where erratic and disruptive mood swings are a defining feature.

Affective neuroscience is the study of how the brain processes emotions. This field combines neuroscience with the psychological study of personality, emotion, and mood. The basis of emotions and what emotions are remains an issue of debate within the field of affective neuroscience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affect (psychology)</span> Experience of feeling or emotion

Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. In psychology, "affect" refers to the experience of feeling or emotion. It encompasses a wide range of emotional states and can be positive or negative. Affect is a fundamental aspect of human experience and plays a central role in many psychological theories and studies. It can be understood as a combination of three components: emotion, mood, and affectivity. In psychology, the term "affect" is often used interchangeably with several related terms and concepts, though each term may have slightly different nuances. These terms encompass: emotion, feeling, mood, emotional state, sentiment, affective state, emotional response, affective reactivity, disposition. Researchers and psychologists may employ specific terms based on their focus and the context of their work.

Emotional dysregulation is characterized by an inability in flexibly responding to and managing emotional states, resulting in intense and prolonged emotional reactions that deviate from social norms, given the nature of the environmental stimuli encountered. Such reactions not only deviate from accepted social norms but also surpass what is informally deemed appropriate or proportional to the encountered stimuli.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emotionality</span>

Emotionality is the observable behavioral and physiological component of emotion. It is a measure of a person's emotional reactivity to a stimulus. Most of these responses can be observed by other people, while some emotional responses can only be observed by the person experiencing them. Observable responses to emotion do not have a single meaning. A smile can be used to express happiness or anxiety, while a frown can communicate sadness or anger. Emotionality is often used by experimental psychology researchers to operationalize emotion in research studies.

Thought suppression is a psychoanalytical defence mechanism. It is a type of motivated forgetting in which an individual consciously attempts to stop thinking about a particular thought. It is often associated with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD is when a person will repeatedly attempt to prevent or "neutralize" intrusive distressing thoughts centered on one or more obsessions. It is also thought to be a cause of memory inhibition, as shown by research using the think/no think paradigm. Thought suppression is relevant to both mental and behavioral levels, possibly leading to ironic effects that are contrary to intention. Ironic process theory is one cognitive model that can explain the paradoxical effect.

Neuroticism is a personality trait associated with negative emotions. It is one of the Big Five traits. Individuals with high scores on neuroticism are more likely than average to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, pessimism, guilt, depressed mood, and loneliness. Such people are thought to respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations, such as minor frustrations, as appearing hopelessly difficult. Their behavioral responses may include procrastination, substance use, and other maladaptive behaviors, which may aid in relieving negative emotions and generating positive ones.

Memory and trauma is the deleterious effects that physical or psychological trauma has on memory.

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed. It can also be defined as extrinsic and intrinsic processes responsible for monitoring, evaluating, and modifying emotional reactions. Emotional self-regulation belongs to the broader set of emotion regulation processes, which includes both the regulation of one's own feelings and the regulation of other people's feelings.

Emotional responsivity is the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. It is a sharp change of emotion according to a person's emotional state. Increased emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating more response to a stimulus. Reduced emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating less response to a stimulus. Any response exhibited after exposure to the stimulus, whether it is appropriate or not, would be considered as an emotional response. Although emotional responsivity applies to nonclinical populations, it is more typically associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Emotion can have a powerful effect on humans and animals. Numerous studies have shown that the most vivid autobiographical memories tend to be of emotional events, which are likely to be recalled more often and with more clarity and detail than neutral events.

Emotion perception refers to the capacities and abilities of recognizing and identifying emotions in others, in addition to biological and physiological processes involved. Emotions are typically viewed as having three components: subjective experience, physical changes, and cognitive appraisal; emotion perception is the ability to make accurate decisions about another's subjective experience by interpreting their physical changes through sensory systems responsible for converting these observed changes into mental representations. The ability to perceive emotion is believed to be both innate and subject to environmental influence and is also a critical component in social interactions. How emotion is experienced and interpreted depends on how it is perceived. Likewise, how emotion is perceived is dependent on past experiences and interpretations. Emotion can be accurately perceived in humans. Emotions can be perceived visually, audibly, through smell and also through bodily sensations and this process is believed to be different from the perception of non-emotional material.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

Expressive suppression is defined as the intentional reduction of the facial expression of an emotion. It is a component of emotion regulation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sleep and emotions</span> Overview about sleep and emotions

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Machiavellianism (psychology)</span> Psychological trait

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Affect labeling is an implicit emotional regulation strategy that can be simply described as "putting feelings into words". Specifically, it refers to the idea that explicitly labeling one's, typically negative, emotional state results in a reduction of the conscious experience, physiological response, and/or behavior resulting from that emotional state. For example, writing about a negative experience in one's journal may improve one's mood. Some other examples of affect labeling include discussing one's feelings with a therapist, complaining to friends about a negative experience, posting one's feelings on social media or acknowledging the scary aspects of a situation.

Bunmi O. Olatunji is an American psychologist who is Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Social Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He is Director of the Emotion and Anxiety Research Laboratory and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the Vanderbilt University Graduate School. Olatunji studies the psychopathology of obsessive–compulsive disorder.

References

  1. ↑ Berking, Matthias; Whitley, Brian (30 August 2014). Affect Regulation Training: A Practitioners' Manual. Springer. p. 5. ISBN   9781493910229 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  2. ↑ Fonagy, Peter; Gergely, Gyorgy; Target, Mary; Jurist, Elliot L. (24 April 2019). Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. Other Press, LLC. p. 93. ISBN   9781892746344 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  3. ↑ Hill, Daniel (31 August 2015). Affect Regulation Theory: A Clinical Model. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN   9780393711325 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  4. ↑ Taylor, Graeme J.; Bagby, R. Michael; Parker, James D. A. (7 October 1999). Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness. Cambridge University Press. p. 7. ISBN   9780521778503 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  5. ↑ Schore, Allan N. (6 August 2012). Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: The Neurobiology of Emotional Development. Psychology Press. p. 390. ISBN   9781135693930 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  6. ↑ Bradley, Susan J. (16 July 2003). Affect Regulation and the Development of Psychopathology. Guilford Press. p. 81. ISBN   9781572309395 . Retrieved 24 April 2019– via Google Books.
  7. ↑ James, William (1884). "What is an Emotion?". Mind. 9 (34): 188–205. ISSN   0026-4423. JSTOR   2246769.
  8. ↑ Boag, Simon (2019-06-28). Freudian repression, the Unconscious, and the Dynamics of Inhibition. London: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780429475023. ISBN   978-0-429-47502-3.
  9. ↑ "Carl Gustav Jung's Theory of Personality in Psychology". 2024-01-24. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  10. ↑ Spaderna, Heike; Hellwig, Susan (2015-01-01), "Cardiac Disease, Coping with", in Wright, James D. (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), Oxford: Elsevier, pp. 111–116, ISBN   978-0-08-097087-5 , retrieved 2024-03-18
  11. ↑ Cognitive appraisal
  12. ↑ "Process Model of Emotion Regulation - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics". www.sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  13. ↑ "APA PsycNet". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  14. ↑ Chapman, Benjamin P.; Fiscella, Kevin; Kawachi, Ichiro; Duberstein, Paul; Muennig, Peter (October 2013). "Emotion Suppression and Mortality Risk Over a 12-Year Follow-up". Journal of Psychosomatic Research. 75 (4): 381–385. doi:10.1016/j.jpsychores.2013.07.014. PMC   3939772 . PMID   24119947.
  15. ↑ Ochsner, Kevin N.; Gross, James J. (May 2005). "The cognitive control of emotion". Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 9 (5): 242–249. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2005.03.010. ISSN   1364-6613. PMID   15866151.
  16. ↑ LeDoux, J. E. (2000). "Emotion circuits in the brain". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 23: 155–184. doi:10.1146/annurev.neuro.23.1.155. ISSN   0147-006X. PMID   10845062.
  17. ↑ "APA PsycNet". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  18. ↑ "APA PsycNet". psycnet.apa.org. Retrieved 2024-03-18.
  19. ↑ Thompson, R. A. (1994). "Emotion regulation: a theme in search of definition". Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development. 59 (2–3): 25–52. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5834.1994.tb01276.x. ISSN   0037-976X. PMID   7984164.
  20. ↑ Matsumoto, David; Seung Hee Yoo; Fontaine, Johnny (January 2008). "Mapping Expressive Differences Around the World: The Relationship Between Emotional Display Rules and Individualism Versus Collectivism". Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology. 39 (1): 55–74. doi:10.1177/0022022107311854. hdl:1822/29563. ISSN   0022-0221.
  21. ↑ Renna, Megan E.; Quintero, Jean M.; Fresco, David M.; Mennin, Douglas S. (2017-02-06). "Emotion Regulation Therapy: A Mechanism-Targeted Treatment for Disorders of Distress". Frontiers in Psychology. 8: 98. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00098 . ISSN   1664-1078. PMC   5292405 . PMID   28220089.
  22. ↑ Berking, Matthias; Eichler, Eva; Luhmann, Maike; Diedrich, Alice; Hiller, Wolfgang; Rief, Winfried (2019-08-29). "Affect regulation training reduces symptom severity in depression – A randomized controlled trial". PLOS ONE. 14 (8): e0220436. Bibcode:2019PLoSO..1420436B. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0220436 . ISSN   1932-6203. PMC   6715183 . PMID   31465443.
  23. ↑ Peña-Sarrionandia, Ainize; Mikolajczak, Moïra; Gross, James J. (2015-02-24). "Integrating emotion regulation and emotional intelligence traditions: a meta-analysis". Frontiers in Psychology. 6: 160. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00160 . ISSN   1664-1078. PMC   4338658 . PMID   25759676.
  24. ↑ Durlak, Joseph A.; Weissberg, Roger P.; Dymnicki, Allison B.; Taylor, Rebecca D.; Schellinger, Kriston B. (January 2011). "The Impact of Enhancing Students' Social and Emotional Learning: A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Universal Interventions". Child Development. 82 (1): 405–432. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2010.01564.x. ISSN   0009-3920. PMID   21291449.
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