Emotion Regulation In Psychological Research

In 2014, Gross & John conducted an experiment to validate the emotion regulation questionnaire, they were trying to address “what is emotion?” and how one may try to regulate their emotions. “Emotion regulation refers to shaping which emotions one has, when one has them, and how one experiences or expresses these emotions (Gross, 1998)(Gross, 2014).” This is an important aspect when trying to conduct an experiment on emotions; some people are better at regulating their emotions than others. Emotion regulation can affect us all and if we do it well, it can enhance our performance on experiments that are trying to validate emotion regulation. “A discussion of emotion regulation presupposes an understanding of what emotion is (Gross, 2014).” In …show more content…
Suppression of emotion plays a huge role in psychological research experiments. Some hypothesis test to see if suppressing one’s emotions is more related to negative emotions. In Gross & John (2003) “study 5 shows that using reappraisal is related positively to well-being, whereas suppression is related negatively.” People who suppress their emotions are more likely to hold everything inside and keep their feelings bottled up, making them more prone to having negative thoughts and emotions. “Suppressors’ avoidance and lack of close social relationships also suggests less life satisfaction, lower self-esteem, and a less optimistic attitude about the future (Gross & John, 2003).” This statement is basically backing up the conclusion that individuals that suppress their emotions are more likely to have a negative outlook on life. For example, in Beblo & Fernando’s article Increased suppression of negative and positive emotions in major depression they talk about people with MDD and how suppression takes a toll on their emotions. “Patients with major depression (MDD) show increased suppression of negative emotions. Emotion suppression is related to depressive symptoms such as depressive mood and anhedonia (Beblo & Fernando et al., 2012).” In this study they had 39 MDD patients and 41 healthy control subjects take the Emotional Acceptance Questionnaire to study emotion suppression and fear of emotions. “MDD …show more content…
Emery and Thomas Hess wrote on article on Cognitive Consequences of Expressive Regulation in Older Adults examining older adults and determining whether they show the same memory effect as shown in younger adults. “Expression regulation in younger adults appears to have the cognitive consequences of reduced memory for the emotional stimuli, an effect that had previously been linked to the redirection of attention from processing the stimulus to controlling behavior (Emery & Hess, 2011).” Dr. Emery and Thomas Hess conducted a study to test whether older adults reacted and resulted the same as the younger ones when suppressing their emotions. To test their theory they had “old adults and young adults view positive and negative emotional pictures under instructions to view the pictures naturally, enhance their facial expressions, or suppress their facial expressions (Emery & Hess, 2011).” This study was looking at consequences of expressive regulation and how expressive regulation influenced subsequent memory. The results concluded that there was a significant difference in the effects of expressive regulation on memory. “Younger adults showed reduced picture recall after suppression, but older adults did not (Emery & Hess, 2011).” In conclusion one could summarize that the elderly folks are always the wisest