Christou-Champi, S, Farrow, TF and Webb, TL (2014) Automatic control of negative emotions: Evidence that structured practice increases the efficiency of emotion regulation. Cognition & Emotion. ISSN 0269-9931
Abstract
Emotion regulation (ER) is vital to everyday functioning. However, the effortful nature of many forms of ER may lead to regulation being inefficient and potentially ineffective. The present research examined whether structured practice could increase the efficiency of ER. During three training sessions, comprising a total of 150 training trials, participants were presented with negatively valenced images and asked either to "attend" (control condition) or "reappraise" (ER condition). A further group of participants did not participate in training but only completed follow-up measures. Practice increased the efficiency of ER as indexed by decreased time required to regulate emotions and increased heart rate variability (HRV). Furthermore, participants in the ER condition spontaneously regulated their negative emotions two weeks later and reported being more habitual in their use of ER. These findings indicate that structured practice can facilitate the automatic control of negative emotions and that these effects persist beyond training.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 Christou-Champi et al. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Implicit emotion regulation, heart rate variability, automatic regulation, practice, training intervention |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ESRC RES-060-25-0044 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 14 Apr 2014 12:36 |
Last Modified: | 14 Apr 2014 12:36 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2014.901213 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/02699931.2014.901213 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:78491 |