Shu Jocelyn, Ochsner Kevin N, Phelps Elizabeth A
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, 52 Oxford St., Cambridge, MA 02138 USA.
Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY USA.
Affect Sci. 2022 Jun 3;3(3):528-538. doi: 10.1007/s42761-022-00115-8. eCollection 2022 Sep.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a time of great uncertainty for the general population and highlights the need to understand how attitudes towards uncertainty may affect well-being. Intolerance of uncertainty is a trait associated with worry, anxiety, and mood disorders. As adaptive emotion regulation supports well-being and mental health, it is possible that intolerance of uncertainty is also associated with the ability and tendency to regulate emotions. However, the relationships between intolerance of uncertainty and widely studied cognitive emotion regulation strategies - such as reappraisal and suppression - have received little attention. In two studies that recruited participants online from the United States, we tested the hypotheses that higher trait intolerance of uncertainty would be associated with greater worry, decreased capacity and tendency to use reappraisal, and increased tendency to use suppression in daily life. Study 1 provided an initial test of our hypotheses. Study 2 was a confirmatory, preregistered study that replicated findings in a young adult sample, demonstrating that scores on the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS) were associated with greater COVID-related worry, decreased capacity to regulate negative emotions on a task that manipulated the use of reappraisal, and greater self-reported use of suppression in daily life. Together, these results indicate that intolerance of uncertainty is associated with the capacity and tendency to use emotion regulation strategies important for well-being.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00115-8.
对普通大众而言，新冠疫情期间充满了巨大的不确定性，这凸显了了解人们对不确定性的态度如何影响幸福感的必要性。对不确定性的不耐受是一种与担忧、焦虑和情绪障碍相关的特质。由于适应性情绪调节有助于提升幸福感和心理健康，因此对不确定性的不耐受可能也与情绪调节的能力和倾向有关。然而，对不确定性的不耐受与广泛研究的认知情绪调节策略（如重新评价和抑制）之间的关系却很少受到关注。在两项从美国在线招募参与者的研究中，我们检验了以下假设：更高的特质性不确定性不耐受会与更多的担忧、重新评价能力和倾向的降低以及日常生活中抑制使用倾向的增加相关。研究1对我们的假设进行了初步检验。研究2是一项预先注册的验证性研究，在一个年轻成人样本中重复了研究结果，表明不确定性不耐受量表（IUS）的得分与更多与新冠相关的担忧、在一项操纵重新评价使用的任务中调节负面情绪的能力降低以及日常生活中自我报告的更多抑制使用相关。总之，这些结果表明，对不确定性的不耐受与使用对幸福感很重要的情绪调节策略的能力和倾向有关。
网络版包含可在10.1007/s42761-022-00115-8获取的补充材料。
