Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh.
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.
Emotion. 2014 Jun;14(3):504-512. doi: 10.1037/a0035459. Epub 2014 Feb 10.
According to appraisal theories of emotion, cognitive reappraisal is a successful emotion regulation strategy because it involves cognitively changing our thoughts, which, in turn, change our emotions. However, recent evidence has challenged the importance of cognitive change and, instead, has suggested that attentional deployment may at least partly explain the emotion regulation success of cognitive reappraisal. The purpose of the current study was to examine the causal relationship between attentional deployment and emotion regulation success. We examined 2 commonly used emotion regulation strategies--cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression-because both depend on attention but have divergent behavioral, experiential, and physiological outcomes. Participants were either instructed to regulate emotions during free-viewing (unrestricted image viewing) or gaze-controlled (restricted image viewing) conditions and to self-report negative emotional experience. For both emotion regulation strategies, emotion regulation success was not altered by changes in participant control over the (a) direction of attention (free-viewing vs. gaze-controlled) during image viewing and (b) valence (negative vs. neutral) of visual stimuli viewed when gaze was controlled. Taken together, these findings provide convergent evidence that attentional deployment does not alter subjective negative emotional experience during either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression, suggesting that strategy-specific processes, such as cognitive appraisal and response modulation, respectively, may have a greater impact on emotional regulation success than processes common to both strategies, such as attention.
根据情绪评估理论，认知重评是一种成功的情绪调节策略，因为它涉及到认知上改变我们的想法，从而改变我们的情绪。然而，最近的证据对认知改变的重要性提出了挑战，相反，它表明注意力的部署至少可以部分解释认知重评的情绪调节成功。本研究的目的是检验注意力部署和情绪调节成功之间的因果关系。我们考察了两种常用的情绪调节策略——认知重评和表达抑制，因为它们都依赖于注意力，但具有不同的行为、体验和生理结果。参与者被指示在自由观看（不受限制的图像观看）或注视控制（限制的图像观看）条件下调节情绪，并自我报告负面情绪体验。对于这两种情绪调节策略，参与者在观看图像时对（a）注意力方向（自由观看与注视控制）的控制变化和（b）当注视被控制时观看的视觉刺激的效价（消极与中性）并没有改变情绪调节的成功。这些发现共同提供了一致的证据，即注意力的部署并没有改变认知重评或表达抑制期间的主观负面情绪体验，这表明策略特异性的过程，如认知评估和反应调节，可能比两种策略共有的过程，如注意力，对情绪调节成功有更大的影响。
