Soto José A, Albrecht Soto Sara L, Perez Christopher R, Posada Rodríguez Camilo, Newman Michelle G
Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University.
Emotion. 2025 Feb;25(1):247-258. doi: 10.1037/emo0001422. Epub 2024 Sep 30.
Positive reappraisal has been shown to be a generally effective emotion regulation strategy associated with multiple indices of greater psychological functioning. There are, however, some emotion-eliciting events, such as discrimination, that may not lend themselves to favorable alternative interpretations or which have relatively fewer affordances. In such instances, a reappraisal strategy could lose its effectiveness. We conducted an experimental test of this hypothesized ineffectiveness of positive reappraisal within a discriminatory context. Participants were 404 Black and Latine college students randomly assigned to imagine being the recipient of a rude or discriminatory comment and immediately afterward were asked to either ruminate about or positively reappraise the event. Overall, positive reappraisal was more effective than rumination in downregulating anxiety and anger. However, a single- contrast test revealed that positive reappraisal in response to the rude comment was significantly more effective in reducing anxiety relative to the other three conditions (average of positive reappraisal of the discriminatory comment or rumination to either the rude or discriminatory comment). Additional analyses also showed that oppressed minority ideology (OMI) moderated the utility of anger regulation such that, for those lower on OMI, positive reappraisal was most effective in regulating anger in response to discrimination (compared to all other conditions), but among those higher on OMI, rumination and reappraisal to discrimination were equally effective. Results suggest that the effectiveness of positive reappraisal is lessened in a discrimination context and that more robust strategies may be needed to deal with the emotional fallout from this unique stressor. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).
积极重评已被证明是一种普遍有效的情绪调节策略，与多种心理功能增强的指标相关。然而，有些引发情绪的事件，比如歧视，可能无法进行有利的替代性解读，或者可供选择的有利方式相对较少。在这种情况下，重评策略可能会失效。我们针对这种假设的在歧视情境下积极重评的无效性进行了一项实验测试。404名黑人和拉丁裔大学生参与了实验，他们被随机分配去想象自己是一条无礼或带有歧视性评论的接收者，随后立即被要求对该事件进行沉思或积极重评。总体而言，在下调焦虑和愤怒方面，积极重评比沉思更有效。然而，一项单因素对比测试显示，相对于其他三种情况（对歧视性评论的积极重评或对无礼或歧视性评论的沉思的平均值），针对无礼评论进行积极重评在减轻焦虑方面显著更有效。进一步分析还表明，受压迫少数群体意识形态（OMI）调节了愤怒调节的效用，即对于OMI得分较低的人来说，积极重评在应对歧视时调节愤怒最为有效（与所有其他情况相比），但在OMI得分较高的人中，对歧视的沉思和重评效果相同。结果表明，在歧视情境下积极重评的有效性会降低，可能需要更有力的策略来应对这种独特压力源带来的情绪影响。（《心理学文摘数据库记录》（c）2025美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
