Bastian Brock, Pe Madeline Lee, Kuppens Peter
a University of New South Wales , Sydney , Australia.
b KU Leuven-University of Leuven , Leuven , Belgium.
Cogn Emot. 2017 Feb;31(2):261-268. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1103702. Epub 2015 Oct 29.
Social norms and values may be important predictors of how people engage with and regulate their negative emotional experiences. Previous research has shown that social expectancies (the perceived social pressure not to feel negative emotion (NE)) exacerbate feelings of sadness. In the current research, we examined whether social expectancies may be linked to how people process emotional information. Using a modified classical flanker task involving emotional rather than non-emotional stimuli, we found that, for those who experienced low levels of NE, social expectancies were linked to the selective avoidance of negative emotional information. Those who experienced high levels of NE did not show a selective avoidance of negative emotional information. The findings suggest that, for people who experience many NEs, social expectancies may lead to discrepancies between how they think they ought to feel and the kind of emotional information they pay attention to.
社会规范和价值观可能是人们如何应对和调节负面情绪体验的重要预测因素。先前的研究表明，社会期望（即感知到的不感受负面情绪（NE）的社会压力）会加剧悲伤情绪。在当前的研究中，我们考察了社会期望是否可能与人们处理情绪信息的方式有关。通过使用一种经过修改的经典侧翼任务，该任务涉及情绪刺激而非非情绪刺激，我们发现，对于那些经历低水平NE的人来说，社会期望与对负面情绪信息的选择性回避有关。那些经历高水平NE的人没有表现出对负面情绪信息的选择性回避。研究结果表明，对于经历许多负面情绪的人来说，社会期望可能导致他们认为自己应该有的感受与他们所关注的情绪信息类型之间存在差异。
