The selective recall of positive memories is thought to be an effective mood repair technique, but little research has examined individual differences in the motivation or ability to implement this strategy. This study examined factors considered likely to impact valenced memory recall: dysphoria and emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and suppression). Dysphoria was rela...

Emotion dysregulation is a key feature of mood and anxiety disorders. Many of these disorders also involve volumetric reductions in brain regions implicated in emotion regulation, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC). Investigating this relationship in healthy individuals may clarify the link between emotion regulation and volumetric reductions in this key brain region. High-re...

Learning episodes are rife with emotional experiences, so it is critical that learners regulate negative affective states as they occur. In the present study, learners were instructed to use two forms of cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions that arose during a one hour learning session. Our findings suggest that cognitive reappraisal is an effective strategy for regulating emotio...

Temptations besiege us, and we must resist their appeal if we are to achieve our long-term goals. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal could be used to successfully maintain performance in a task embedded in temptation. In Study 1, 62 participants had to search for information on the Internet while resisting attractive task-irrelevant content on preselected sites....

Multiple emotion regulation strategies have been identified and found to differ in their effectiveness at decreasing negative emotions. One reason for this might be that individual strategies are associated with differing levels of cognitive demand and require distinct patterns of visual attention to achieve their effects. In the current study, we tested this hypothesis in a sample of psychiatr...

One of the most effective strategies for regulating emotional responses is cognitive reappraisal. While prior work has made great strides in characterizing reappraisal's neural mechanisms and behavioral outcomes, the key issue of how regulation varies as a function of emotional intensity remains unaddressed. We compared the behavioral and neural correlates of reappraisal of high- and low-intens...

This study focuses on the relationship between the use of specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies and emotional problems. Two samples were included: 99 adults from a clinical population and 99 matched non-clinical adults. Data was obtained in both groups on the use of nine cognitive emotion regulation strategies: self-blame, other-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, putting into perspe...

Does aging impact strategy choice with regard to regulating negative emotions? Based on the assumption that older adults are highly motivated to quickly defuse negative states, we predicted that older adults, relative to young adults, would show an increased preference for distraction (a cognitive disengagement strategy) over reappraisal (a cognitive engagement strategy) in the face of negative...

Difficulties in emotion regulation have been associated with increased suicidal thoughts and behaviours. The majority of studies have examined self-reported use of emotion regulation strategies. In contrast, the current study focused on a direct measure of individuals' ability to use a specific emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, using the late positive potential (LPP), an event...

The goal of this investigation was to examine how emotional clarity and a specific emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, interact to predict Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptom severity and positive affect among treatment seeking military Veterans (N=75, 93% male) diagnosed with PTSD. PTSD is a highly relevant context because PTSD features include heightened stress reacti...