Smiling won't make you feel better, but it might make people like you more: Interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences of response-focused emotion regulation strategies.

Emotion regulation (ER) is integral to well-being and relationship quality. Experimental studies tend to explore the intrapersonal effects of ER (i.e. impacts of ER on oneself) and leave out the interpersonal impacts (i.e. the bidirectional impact of ER on the regulator and partner). The ER strategy expressive suppression shows maladaptive interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences during distressing conversations. We aimed to explore whether other ER strategies that modify facial expressions (i.e. expressive dissonance) have similar consequences to suppressing emotional expressions. We randomly assigned 164 women participants to use expressive dissonance and expressive suppression or to naturally express emotions, while engaging in a conversation task with a confederate. We observed intrapersonal outcomes, including electrodermal activity and self-reported affect throughout the experiment, and memory performance after. Video coders unaware of the study goals assessed the conversation on interpersonal qualities (e.g. friendliness and likeability). There were no differences between conditions on intrapersonal outcomes. Participants engaging in expressive dissonance, however, were rated more positively, and participants in the expressive suppression condition were rated more negatively on interpersonal qualities, relative to the control condition. Although neither strategy appeared to impact the participant, intrapersonally, both notably influenced the observer's impression of the participant.

Smiling won't necessarily make you feel better: Response-focused emotion regulation strategies have little impact on cognitive, behavioural, physiological, and subjective outcomes.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Response-focused emotion regulation (RF-ER) strategies may alter people's evoked emotions, influencing intrapersonal outcomes. Researchers have found that participants engaging in expressive suppression (ES; a RF-ER strategy) experience increased sympathetic nervous system arousal, affect, and lowered memory accuracy. It is unclear, however, whether all RF-ER strategies exert maladaptive effects. Expressive dissonance (ED; displaying an expression opposite from how one feels) is a RF-ER strategy, and likely considered "maladaptive". As outlined by the facial feedback hypothesis, however, smiling may increase positive emotion, suggesting it may be an adaptive strategy. We compared the effects of ED and ES to a control condition on psychophysiology, memory, and affect, to assess whether ED is an adaptive RF-ER strategy, relative to ES, in response to negative stimuli. We recruited women only to account for known gender-based differences in emotion regulation. METHODS: We randomly assigned 144 women-identifying participants to engage in ED, ES, or to naturally observe, while viewing negative and arousing images. We recorded electrodermal activity and self-reported affect throughout and participants completed memory tasks after the picture task. RESULTS: We ran a series of repeated measures and one-way ANOVAs and found no differences between groups across outcomes. LIMITATIONS: The generalizability of our findings may be limited to young, undergraduate women. CONCLUSION: Engaging in ES or ED may not differentially impact outcomes among young, undergraduate women, shedding doubt on a conclusion in past literature that specific strategies are categorically adaptive or maladaptive. Future research exploring RF-ER strategies among diverse populations is warranted.

Motivational Enhancement as a Pretreatment to a Transdiagnostic Intervention for Emerging Adults with Emotion Dysregulation: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

OBJECTIVE: New approaches are needed to help the large number of emerging adults (EA) presenting with early-stage mental health problems. The goal of this pilot study was to carry out a randomized controlled trial to investigate whether motivational enhancement therapy (MET) improved the treatment effects of a 12-week psychological intervention, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Training (DBT-ST), for EA presenting in the early stages of mental health difficulties. Participants were recruited from the Youth Wellness Centre at St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton and McMaster University's Student Wellness Centre in Hamilton, Canada. METHODS: Seventy-five participants were randomized to receive MET followed by DBT-ST or to DBT-ST alone. We assessed psychological distress, emotion dysregulation, and depression and anxiety symptoms as outcomes. RESULTS: We found that both treatment groups had significant reductions in emotional dysregulation, psychological distress, depression, and anxiety at post-treatment and at the three-month follow-up. Participants assigned to MET pre-treatment experienced greater improvement in psychological distress at the end of treatment. CONCLUSION: This pilot study provides preliminary evidence of the potential augmentation of DBT-ST using MET in a real-world setting. Future studies should examine whether MET uniquely augments DBT-ST through the use of a comparable pre-treatment control group.

OBJECTIF: De nouvelles approches sont nécessaires pour aider le grand nombre d'adultes émergeants (AE) qui présentent des problèmes de santé mentale au stade précoce. La présente étude pilote avait pour but d'exécuter un essai randomisé contrôlé afin de rechercher si la thérapie d'amélioration motivationnelle (TAM) améliorait les effets du traitement d'une intervention psychologique de 12 semaines, soit la formation technique à la thérapie comportementale dialectique (FT-TCD), pour les AE qui présentent les premiers stades de difficultés de santé mentale. Les participants ont été recrutés au centre Youth Wellness de St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton et au centre Student Wellness de l'Université McMaster, à Hamilton, Canada. MÉTHODES: Soixante-quinze participants ont reçu au hasard la TAM suivie de la FT-TCD ou uniquement la FT-TCD. Nous avons évalué la détresse psychologique, la dérégulation émotionnelle, et les symptômes dépressifs et anxieux comme résultats. RÉSULTATS: Nous avons constaté que les deux groupes du traitement avaient des réductions significatives de la dérégulation émotionnelle, de la détresse psychologique, de la dépression et de l'anxiété au post-traitement et au suivi de 3 mois. Les participants affectés à la TAM de prétraitement ont eu une plus grande amélioration de la détresse psychologique en fin de traitement. CONCLUSION: Cette étude pilote offre des données probantes préliminaires de l'augmentation potentielle de la FT-TCD utilisant la TAM dans une situation réelle. Les futures études devraient examiner si la TAM n'augmente seulement la FT-TCD que par le recours à un groupe témoin prétraitement comparable.

Thinking high but feeling low: An exploratory cluster analysis investigating how implicit and explicit spider fear co-vary.

Research has demonstrated large differences in the degree to which direct and indirect measures predict each other and variables including behavioural approach and attentional bias. We investigated whether individual differences in the co-variance of "implicit" and "explicit" spider fear exist, and whether this covariation exerts an effect on spider fear-related outcomes. One hundred and thirty-two undergraduate students completed direct and indirect measures of spider fear/avoidance, self-report questionnaires of psychopathology, an attentional bias task, and a proxy Behavioural Approach Task. TwoStep cluster analysis using implicit and explicit spider fear as criterion variables resulted in three clusters: (1) low explicit/low implicit; (2) average explicit/high implicit; and (3) high explicit/low implicit. Clusters with higher explicit fear demonstrated greater disgust propensity and sensitivity and less willingness to approach a spider. No differences between clusters emerged on anticipatory approach anxiety or attentional bias. We discuss results in terms of dual-systems and cognitive-behavioural models of fear.

Material-specific discrepancies in verbal and visual episodic memory in borderline personality disorder.

Material-specific discrepancies in episodic memory were evaluated in 24 patients with borderline personality disorder. Compared to norms, large discrepancies between verbal and visual episodic memory, measured using the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test and Brief Visuospatial Memory Test, respectively, were significantly more frequent among patients, occurring three times more often than in the normative sample. Although visual memory was hypothesized to be more significantly affected, patients showed no consistent decrement to verbal or visual memory.