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.

中文翻译：

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微笑不一定会让你感觉更好：以反应为中心的情绪调节策略对认知、行为、生理和主观结果几乎没有影响

背景和目标

以反应为中心的情绪调节 (RF-ER) 策略可能会改变人们的诱发情绪，从而影响人际交往结果。研究人员发现，参与表达抑制（ES；RF-ER 策略）的参与者体验到交感神经系统的唤醒、情感和记忆准确性降低。然而，尚不清楚所有 RF-ER 策略是否都会产生适应不良的影响。表达失调（ED；表现出与个人感觉相反的表达）是一种 RF-ER 策略，可能被认为是“适应不良”。然而，正如面部反馈假说所概述的那样，微笑可能会增加积极情绪，这表明它可能是一种适应性策略。我们比较了 ED 和 ES 对心理生理、记忆和情感的控制条件的影响，以评估 ED 是否是相对于 ES 的自适应 RF-ER 策略，对负面刺激的反应。我们招募女性只是为了解释已知的基于性别的情绪调节差异。

方法

我们随机分配 144 名女性识别参与者参与 ED、ES 或自然观察，同时查看负面和令人兴奋的图像。我们全程记录了皮肤电活动和自我报告的影响，参与者在图片任务后完成了记忆任务。

结果

我们进行了一系列重复测量和单向方差分析，发现各组之间的结果没有差异。

限制

我们研究结果的普遍性可能仅限于年轻的本科女性。

结论

参与 ES 或 ED 可能不会对年轻、本科女性的结果产生不同的影响，这使人们对过去文献中关于特定策略绝对适应或适应不良的结论产生怀疑。未来研究在不同人群中探索 RF-ER 策略是有必要的。