Relief (emotion)

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Relief is a positive emotion experienced when something unpleasant, painful or distressing has not happened or has come to an end. [1]

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Often accompanied with a sigh, which signals emotional transition, [2] relief is universally recognized, [3] and judged as a fundamental emotion. [4]

In a 2017 study published in Psychology, relief is suggested to be an emotion that can reinforce anxiety through avoidance [5] [6] or be an adaptive coping mechanism when stressed or frustrated. [7]

Types of relief (near-miss and task-completion)

Relief is often discussed as one concept, but when asking people to think of scenarios where they experienced relief, about half thought of near-miss scenarios, and the other half thought of task-completion scenarios. Near-miss relief is the experience of narrowly avoiding something aversive, e.g. the cancellation of a test for which one forgot to prepare. Task-completed relief is experienced upon finishing an aversive task, e.g. a complicated tax return. [8]

To test whether there really are two distinct types of relief, the researchers created a scenario where people had to sing a song in front of an experiment leader after listening to the song once. In one condition (near-miss) the participants were told they did not have to sing after all. In the other condition (task-completed) they sang the song.

Near-miss relief led to more counterfactual thinking (i.e. "what if it had gone differently"), and also feeling more socially isolated. It appears that near-miss relief triggers people to think more about the scenario for the future, maybe how to avoid something like it happening again. Task-completion relief, on the other hand, might reinforce endurance of difficult tasks. [9]

Reinforcing avoidance

Others have also suggested that relief can reinforce avoidance, by rewarding the escape from a scary situation, relief might help create pathological avoidance which can maintain anxiety disorders. [10] [11] For example, if a nervous person needed to speak before a group, and it was cancelled at the last minute, the relief he would feel from not having to do it could reward the avoidance, and his memory of the relief might prompt him to decline an offer to speak another time: thus fear of public speaking is maintained by the feeling of relief.

Sigh of relief

It has been found that rats sigh with relief. Because rats are social animals, the researchers suggested that maybe sighing with relief function as a social signal to other rats. [12] We do not know whether sighing is a social signal, however, and when asked in an experiment, people estimated that they sighed as much around others as alone. [13]

When people are given a difficult task, for instance an impossible puzzle, they sigh between attempts or when they give up. [14] When individuals sigh with relief, it is by definition a transition from something negative to a positive state. One dominating theory suggests that sighing with relief causes a reset, both emotionally and physiologically. This reset theory of relief captures how sighing with relief signals the end of a negative state, and resets the individual for another one. [15] If this is true, it explains why the anxious sigh more, [16] and why one working on a difficult mental task will sigh more often. [17] In these scenarios, sighing might be an attempt to induce psychophysiological relief. Based on these findings, it is proposed that sighs regulate stress and negative emotions, which might be an adaptive coping mechanism for the frustrated, the stressed, and the anxious. [18]

See also

Related Research Articles

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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, is the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood. 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 flexibly to respond to and manage 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.

Attentional bias refers to how a person's perception is affected by selective factors in their attention. Attentional biases may explain an individual's failure to consider alternative possibilities when occupied with an existing train of thought. For example, cigarette smokers have been shown to possess an attentional bias for smoking-related cues around them, due to their brain's altered reward sensitivity. Attentional bias has also been associated with clinically relevant symptoms such as anxiety and depression.

An emotional bias is a distortion in cognition and decision making due to emotional factors.

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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.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Disgust</span> Basic emotion

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cognitive bias modification</span>

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

Emotions play a key role in overall mental health, and sleep plays a crucial role in maintaining the optimal homeostasis of emotional functioning. Deficient sleep, both in the form of sleep deprivation and restriction, adversely impacts emotion generation, emotion regulation, and emotional expression.

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.

References

  1. "relief". Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved 2020-01-26.
  2. Vlemincx, E.; Meulders, M.; Abelson, J. (2017). "Sigh rate during emotional transitions: More evidence for a sigh of relief". Biological Psychology. 125: 163–172. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.03.005. PMID   28315375.
  3. Laukka, P.; Elfenbein, H. A.; Söder, N.; Nordström, H. (2013). "Cross-cultural decoding of positive and negative non-linguistic emotion vocalisations". Frontiers in Psychology. 6: 353. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00353 . PMC   3728469 . PMID   23914178.
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  8. Sweeny, K.; Vohs, K. D. (2012). "On near misses and completed tasks: The nature of relief". Psychological Science. 23 (5): 464–468. doi:10.1177/0956797611434590. PMID   22477104. S2CID   5951979.
  9. Sweeny, K.; Vohs, K. D. (2012). "On near misses and completed tasks: The nature of relief". Psychological Science. 23 (5): 464–468. doi:10.1177/0956797611434590. PMID   22477104. S2CID   5951979.
  10. Vervliet, B.; Lange, I.; Milad, M. (2017). "Temporal dynamics of relief in avoidance conditioning and fear extinction: Experimental validation and clinical relevance". Behaviour Research and Therapy. 96: 66–78. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2017.04.011 . PMID   28457484.
  11. Deutsch, R.; Smith, K.; Kordts-Freudinger, R.; Reichardt, R. (2015). "How absent negativity relates to affect and motivation: an integrative relief model". Frontiers in Psychology. 6: 152. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00152 . PMC   4354424 . PMID   25806008.
  12. Soltysik, S.; Jelen, P. (2005). "In rats, sighs correlate with relief". Physiology & Behavior. 85 (5): 598–602. doi:10.1016/j.physbeh.2005.06.008. PMID   16038951.
  13. Teigen, K. (2008). "Is a sigh "just a sigh"? Sighs as emotional signals and responses to a difficult task". Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 49 (1): 49–57. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00599.x. PMID   18190402.
  14. Teigen, K. (2008). "Is a sigh "just a sigh"? Sighs as emotional signals and responses to a difficult task". Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 49 (1): 49–57. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00599.x. PMID   18190402.
  15. Vlemincx, E.; Abelson, J.; Lehrer, P.; Davenport, P.; van Diest, I.; van den Bergh, O. (2013). "Respiratory variability and sighing: A psychophysiological reset model". Biological Psychology. 93 (1): 24–32. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.12.001. PMID   23261937.
  16. Vlemincx, E.; Meulders, M.; Abelson, J. (2017). "Sigh rate during emotional transitions: More evidence for a sigh of relief". Biological Psychology. 125: 163–172. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.03.005. PMID   28315375.
  17. Teigen, K. (2008). "Is a sigh "just a sigh"? Sighs as emotional signals and responses to a difficult task". Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. 49 (1): 49–57. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9450.2007.00599.x. PMID   18190402.
  18. Vlemincx, E.; Meulders, M.; Abelson, J. (2017). "Sigh rate during emotional transitions: More evidence for a sigh of relief". Biological Psychology. 125: 163–172. doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2017.03.005. PMID   28315375.