Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.
Emotion. 2012 Dec;12(6):1248-63. doi: 10.1037/a0028289. Epub 2012 May 28.
Extant research suggests that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection of negative emotional experiences. However, this work operationalizes adaptive self-reflection in terms of a reduction in the intensity of negative emotion, ignoring other important aspects of emotional experience such as emotion duration. Moreover, prior research has predominantly focused on how self-distancing influences emotional reactivity in response to reflecting on negative experiences, leaving open questions concerning how this process operates in the context of positive experiences. We addressed these issues by examining the relationship between self-distancing and the duration of daily negative and positive emotions using a daily diary methodology. Discrete-time survival analyses revealed that reflecting on both daily negative (Studies 1 and 2) and positive events (Study 2) from a self-distanced perspective was associated with shorter emotions compared with reflecting on such events from a self-immersed perspective. The basic science and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.
现有研究表明，自我疏远有助于对负面情绪体验进行适应性自我反思。然而，这项工作将适应性自我反思操作化为负面情绪强度的降低，而忽略了情绪体验的其他重要方面，例如情绪持续时间。此外，先前的研究主要集中在自我疏远如何影响对负面经历的反应性情绪，而对于这个过程在积极经历的背景下是如何运作的问题仍存在疑问。我们通过使用日常日记方法研究自我疏远与日常负面和积极情绪持续时间之间的关系来解决这些问题。离散时间生存分析显示，与从自我沉浸的角度反思这些事件相比，从自我疏远的角度反思日常负面（研究 1 和 2）和积极事件（研究 2）与情绪持续时间更短有关。讨论了这些发现的基础科学和临床意义。
