文章基本信息

标题：The effectiveness of instructed emotion regulation flexibility in reducing negative affect following exposure to COVID-salient images
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作者：Philippa Specker ; Angela Nickerson
期刊名称：European Journal of Psychotraumatology
印刷版ISSN：2000-8198
电子版ISSN：2000-8066
出版年度：2021
卷号：12
期号：2
页码：38-39
语种：English
出版社：Taylor & Francis Group
摘要：Emotion Regulation (ER) Flexibility is thought to be critical to adaptive psychological functioning. Despite this, very little research has tested the effectiveness of ER Flexibility in managing dynamic stressors, such as the abundance of COVID-related images in contemporary media. This was the first study to develop and validate a novel experimental paradigm to investigate the effectiveness of instructed ER Flexibility. Method: 109 adults with differing levels of anxiety were recruited via MTurk. Similar to the ER Choice paradigm (Sheppes et al., 2011), participants were taught how to use reappraisal and distraction techniques to reduce negative affect in response to negative images. Participants were then randomized to either an inflexible or flexible ER condition. Next, participants viewed 30 COVID-related images that differed in negative emotional intensity, and participants were instructed to use either reappraisal or distraction while viewing each image. Participants in the inflexible conditions utilised a single strategy throughout the task, while participants in the flexible conditions switched between the two strategies to match changes in image intensity. Negative affect was rated after each image. Results: ANCOVA with planned contrasts revealed that, among highly anxious participants, those in the ER flexible conditions reported significantly lower negative affect than those in the inflexible conditions (p = .024). Conclusions: Our findings suggest that highly anxious individuals benefitted from adopting a flexible ER approach when exposed to stressors. Our findings are the first to demonstrate a causal link between instructed ER Flexibility and improved psychological functioning among anxious individuals, which has important clinical implications.