Journal Articles

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915

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Subject: search.filters.subject.Emotional Regulation

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    Emotion dysregulation in nonsuicidal self-injury: Dissociations between global self-reports and real-time responses to emotional challenge
    (Elsevier B.V., 2024-10-01) Robinson K; Cornes JP; Karl JA; Wilson MS; Grimshaw GM
    INTRODUCTION: Prominent theories of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) propose that the behaviour is characterised by amplified emotional responses. However, little is known about how people who self-injure respond during emotional challenge. METHODS: We measured subjective and physiological responding (heart rate, heart rate variability, and electrodermal responding) among young adults with past-year NSSI (n = 51) and those with no lifetime NSSI (n = 50) during a resting baseline, a stress induction, and a post-stress resting phase. Participants reported the extent to which they spontaneously used cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression during the post-stress phase. Two weeks later, a subset of the sample (n = 42) reported how they remembered feeling during the laboratory session. RESULTS: Although the NSSI group reported considerably greater emotion dysregulation than Controls, both groups showed similar subjective and psychological reactivity to, and recovery from, emotional challenge. Both groups used reappraisal and suppression regulation strategies following acute stress to a similar extent, and later came to remember the emotional challenge in a similar manner. LIMITATIONS: Within the NSSI group, past-year self-injury tended to be infrequent and sporadic. Only 43.6% of the sample participated in the follow-up survey assessing memory of emotional challenge. CONCLUSIONS: Findings demonstrate that the role of emotion in NSSI is more complex than prominent theories can account for, raising substantial questions regarding the nature of emotion in NSSI. A more comprehensive understanding of the role of emotion in NSSI is needed to inform intervention strategies to better support people who self-injure.
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    Coming out under fire: The role of minority stress and emotion regulation in sexual orientation disclosure
    (Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2022-05-02) Seager van Dyk I; Aldao A; Pachankis JE
    Minority stress is hypothesized to interfere with sexual orientation disclosure and sexual minority wellbeing. In this study, we investigated whether minority stress is causally linked to reduced disclosure in sexual minorities, and whether emotion regulation, a potentially adaptive form of stigma coping, can intervene to promote disclosure even following exposure to minority stress. Sexual minority adults in the US (N = 168) were recruited online and randomized to a 2 x 2 between-subjects experimental design, where they: 1) received either emotion regulation instructions that asked them to either distance themselves from an emotionally evocative film clip or immerse themselves in the clip, and then 2) viewed either an affirming or a minority stress film clip. Following the film clip, participants completed a written reflection task in which they reflected on the film clip they viewed, which allowed research assistants to subsequently code for participants’ spontaneous disclosures of sexual orientation. Participants who viewed the minority stress clip were significantly less likely to spontaneously disclose their sexual orientation in the written task compared to those who viewed the affirming film clip, OR = 3.21, 95% CI [1.14, 9.05], p = .03. Although the emotion regulation manipulation was successful, there was no effect on sexual orientation disclosure. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate a causal link between minority stress and disclosure in sexual minorities, and thus highlights an important mechanism underlying minority stress’s effects on sexual minority wellbeing. Results demonstrate the importance of interventions that affirm marginalized identities and promote safe sexual orientation disclosure. Future research is needed to determine the circumstances under which effective emotion regulation can buffer against the negative emotional effects of minority stress to promote healthy approach behaviors like disclosure in safe contexts.