Emotion regulation and emotion coherence: evidence for strategy-specific effects

One of the central tenets of emotion theory is that emotions involve coordinated changes across experiential, behavioral, and physiological response domains. Surprisingly little is known, however, about how the strength of this emotion coherence is altered when people try to regulate their emotions....

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEmotion (Washington, D.C.) Vol. 13; no. 5; p. 832
Main Authors Dan-Glauser, Elise S, Gross, James J
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.10.2013
Subjects
Adult
Blood Pressure
Electrocardiography
Emotions - physiology
Female
Heart - physiology
Heart Rate
Humans
Male
Photic Stimulation
Pulse
Repression, Psychology
Respiration
Temperature
Young Adult
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Summary:One of the central tenets of emotion theory is that emotions involve coordinated changes across experiential, behavioral, and physiological response domains. Surprisingly little is known, however, about how the strength of this emotion coherence is altered when people try to regulate their emotions. To address this issue, we recorded experiential, behavioral, and physiological responses while participants watched negative and positive pictures. Cross-correlations were used to quantify emotion coherence. Study 1 tested how two types of suppression (expressive and physiological) influence coherence. Results showed that both strategies decreased the response coherence measured in negative and positive contexts. Study 2 tested how multichannel suppression (simultaneously targeting expressive and physiological responses) and acceptance influence emotion coherence. Results again showed that suppression decreased coherence. By contrast, acceptance was not significantly different from the unregulated condition. These findings help to clarify the nature of emotion response coherence by showing how different forms of emotion regulation may differentially affect it.
ISSN:1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/a0032672