Archive for the ‘Emotional Resilience Research’ Category
Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011
Some interesting if not bizarre research just published shows how we readily regulate our emotions by having unconscious goals. The researchers examined people’s revulsion to pooing babies and found that women who wanted children (with no previous experience of pooing babies) were able to down regulate their emotional responses to poo better than women who had no wish to have children. They were also able to up regulate other emotions surrounding the yukky bits of childhood better than a control group.
We certainly find that people who really want to achieve something like public speaking or flying, tend to move faster through our processes tan those that are doing the course for some goal beyond the fear, for example, getting promoted or going on a particular holiday. If the holiday is important for the person learning to regulate their emotions they tend to find the process easier. However if the individual is learning to regulate their emotions because of the fear of the flight but doesn’t really want to go on the trip anyway this can take longer.
Reference:
Shidlovski, D., & Hassin, R. (2011). When Pooping Babies Become More Appealing: The Effects of Nonconscious Goal Pursuit on Experienced Emotions Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797611417135
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotion, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, Fear of flying, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, overcome fear | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
Is humour a good strategy for coping with emotional events like anxiety and fear?
Are all types of humour equally effective methods of emotion regulation?
I was a police officer for many years before my academic career, and one of the things I always found striking with emergency service workers and later when I was doing research with disaster managers around the world, was their sense and recourse to humour, particularly in stressful situations. Occupations like the military, the police, fire and medical staff are renowned for their humour. This, most clinicians and researchers will tell you, is a coping mechanism for dealing with the stress and regulating their emotions and is a vital strategy in terms of emotional resilience.
However is the use of humour really an effective method for dealing with fear and anxiety and emotion regulation?
It would appear so, however not all forms of humour is effective. An interesting study to be published later this year in the Journal Cognition & Emotion by colleagues at the Department of Psychology , Stanford University looked into the use of humour (or humor if you are American) as an emotion regulation strategy.
They found that positive or good natured humour has an automatic, what is called ‘down regulating effect’ on negative emotions. In other words, appropriate good natured positive humour, funny stories and jokes do all reduce anxiety and fear and is a viable emotion regulation strategy.
They also found that negative mean spirited humour, such as laughing at someone or disparaging jokes at another’s expense for example have no effect in helping people in coping with negative situations, in reducing anxiety and fear and cannot be considered to be effective strategies for emotion regulation.
So if you are stressed, get funny!
Reference
Samson, A.C., & Gross, J.J. (2011) Humour as emotion regulation: The differential consequences of negative versus positive humour. Cognition & Emotion (To be published August/Sept 2011)
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotion, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, humor, humour, overcome fear | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 6th, 2011
For a some time now there has been a disagreement between theoretical models of emotion regulation and coping strategies and empirical evidence founded on observation.
Theories of emotion regulation / resilience and how to cope largely tend to emphasize the importance of processing and rationalising the situation. Often this means some form of cognitive reappraisal or in other words getting a different understanding or perspective on the situation such as finding and changing any biases we might have. Such theories often also tend to show that distraction and suppression techniques for dealing with things like anxiety and trauma, on their own are at best ineffective and can offer only short term relief and at worst (depending on the theory) can prevent long terms recovery or even re-traumatize the individual.
On the other hand evidence from some empirical studies suggest that distraction techniques can be effective and that suppression techniques can, especially if habituated (become a habit) help with emotion regulation and coping with traumatic events.
In a paper published in the June 2011 Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, researchers* vaidating the Perceived Ability to Cope With Trauma (PACT) scale have now found that people who can do all three, cognitive reappraisal including the ability to be more optimistic (positive affect), suppression and distraction tend to cope better with trauma and are more effective with their ability to regulate their emotions.
The researchers term this as ‘coping flexibility’. I will explore the concept of coping flexibility in my next post.
*Reference
Bonanno, G. A., Pat-Horenczyk, R., & Noll, J. (2011) Coping flexibility and trauma: The Perceived Ability to Cope With Trauma (PACT) scale. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, Vol 3(2), Jun 2011, 117-129. doi: 10.1037/a0020921
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotional Resilience Research, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 26th, 2011
Emotional resilience is starting to become a bit a of a hit in organisations and particularly how to develop it. As with all things when they start to become popular, misunderstandings leading to unintended consequences are bound to arise. Whilst i was in one organisation in London last week I over heard a conversation about resilience and mental toughness. Now when you think of the work toughness what does it conjure up?
The quote I over heard was, “This is business, it’s not a nursery. We need to be mentally tough. Resilience and toughness, that’s what is needed. This isn’t a place for emotions.”
Being mentally tough or emotionally resilient means also being tough enough and to deal with our and other peoples emotions. Often, especially in the work place people flight from dealing with emotional issues. There is very good research evidence to show that every decision we make starts in the emotional parts of our brain and that the decision is made before the rational/logical parts of the brain kick in. We then perform a deft bit of post-decision rationalization and think we made the decision based on logic.
Based on an increasing number of MRi and fMRi studies it would appear that we make any decision based on emotional facts and then see if it passes a logic test or rationalization. The problem is our logical processes are skewed by the emotional state we are in at any one time. I am currently analysing boardroom decisions in crisis situations and I am coming to the conclusion that not only are our decisions emotionally based but in a crisis the decision is often a fear based one where the actions that emanate from the board are classical flight (most often with lots of denial), freeze or fight reactions.
When we go to work don’t leave the teddy at home. You might need it later to throw out of the pram.
Posted in Decision making, Definitions in Emotional Resilience, Emotion, Emotional Resilience Research, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Sunday, October 10th, 2010
You would think that if we remembered an event to which an emotion was attached (episodic memory) to it that every time we remembered that event the memory would evoke the same emotions. For example if we had a frightening, fearful or anxiety inducing experience like a car accident, you might expect that every time you recall the accident you would get similar emotional recall as well.
I am in the middle of a literary review for my next book and I came across this little gem of a paper which turns the assumption that emotions evoked during recall will be similar whenever we recall that particular memory. However a couple of studies conducted at University of Utah, USA by Pasupathi show that the emotion evoked during recall will differ depending on the context within which it is being recalled.
The two main factors that appear to have an effect on the emotions evoked during memory recall are the gender of the person / people listening and even more importantly the reactions of the listeners. If the listeners respond in a way that is in line with the original emotion (say fear or fright) then the individual recalling the event will experience that emotion. However if the listeners are in agreement with each other but at odds with the original emotion of the event then this will have an impact on the emotion experienced by the talker.
For example if the person recalls a frightening event and the listeners all respond with laughter, the individual recalling the memory is very likely to report humorous emotions as opposed to the previously experienced fear related emotions. The same can happen the other way around where positive emotions become negative on recall where the listeners react with horror when told the story.
This has implications for emotional resilience in that the context, particularly the reactions of others around us, is quite likely to determine the reaction of the individual to any situation particularly resilience in situations that involve elements of recall of previous or past situations.
Pasupathi, M. (2003) Emotion regulation during social remembering: Differences between emotions elicited during an event and emotions elicited when talking about it. Memory, Volume 11, Issue 2 2003 , pages 151 - 163
Tags: emotional regulation, emotional resilience, Fear, humor, humour, Memory, recall, Research
Posted in Anxiety research, Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, Memory, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience, humor, humour | No Comments »
Friday, October 1st, 2010
I was reviewing some research at the Medical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford where I was teaching today and I came across some really interesting findings about indicators of depression. It has been known for some time that people with a wide network of friends tend to have fewer incidents of depression than those that have few friends. However most of the studies concerned show mixed results - we now think we know why.
It would appear that it is not just having a good network of friends that matters when times get tough, it is the connections within the network that matter. If an individual has a network of friends that aren’t in themselves connected to each other, that individual is at a higher risk of depression compared to people who have a network of friends who mainly know each other.
It would appear that interconnected networks promote stronger levels of emotional resilience by allowing more open understanding and support for and between the individuals involved, than people with no real support network or a network of non-interconnected friends.
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, depression, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010
Here is a list of therapies, all of which come under the broad banner of CBT or Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies. I have compiled this list for an article I am writing about what CBT is.
- Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
- Anxiety Management Training
- Applied Behavioral Analysis
- Behavioral Activation
- Behavior Modification - the term originally used by Edward Thorndike in 1911.
- Behavior therapy
- Cognitive Therapy
- Computerised Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
- Cognitive Analytic Therapy
- Cognitive-Behavior Modification
- Cognitive Behavioral Analysis System of Psychotherapy
- Contingency Management
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy
- Direct Therapeutic Exposure
- Exposure and Response Prevention
- Functional Analytic Psychotherapy
- Interactive Cognitive Subsystems
- Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy
- Multimodal Therapy
- Narrative Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
- Problem-Solving Therapy
- Rational Emotive Therapy
- Prolonged Exposure Therapy
- Rational Behavior Therapy
- Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy - formerly called Rational Therapy and Rational Emotive Therapy
- Rational Living Therapy,
- Rational Therapy
- Reality Therapy
- Relapse Prevention
- Self Control TrainingSelf Instructional Training
- Self-talk Identification, Questioning & Revision (SIQR)
- Stress Inoculation Training
- Systematic desensitization
- Systematic Rational Restructuring
I will attempt over the coming months to illuminate this list with more information about each CBT. If I have missed any out please do let me know.
So now you know!
Tags: 1. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy 2. Anxiety Management Training 3. Applied Behavioral Analysis 4. Behavioral Activation 5. Behavior Modification - the term originally used by Edward Th, 27. Rational Therapy 28. Reality Therapy 29. Relapse Prevention 30. Self Control TrainingSelf Instructional Training 31. Self-talk Identification, CBT, Questioning & Revision (SIQR) 32. Stress Inoculation Training 33. Systematic desensitization, Systematic Rational Restructuring
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research | No Comments »
Monday, September 27th, 2010
To catastrophize (catastrophise) means to perceive a situation as being much worse than it really is. There are three types of catastrophizing:
- Ruminating or going over and over a past situation and thinking that the situation or the effects of the situation or something the individual did in a past situation was much worse than it really was. Often the individual catastrophizing a past situation is the only person that remembers or thinks about the situation. This can include thinking over a situation that ended ok and getting stressed, fearful or anxious because the individual considers it could have ended much worse than it actually did.
- Considering a current situation to be worse than it really is.
- Thinking about an event that hasn’t happened (imaginary) or a possible future event this is about to occur or might happen and imagining that it could be a disaster with no real evidence that the disastrous outcome imagined will actually happen.
The problem with catastrophizing is that when an individual engages in it, it creates anxiety and fear in the individual which in turn makes catastrophizing more likely. In this way people can end up in a sharp downward spiral or cycle with ever increasing anxiety and fear caused by the catastrophizing leading to increased levels of catastrophizing.
In a 2003 study* it was found that there was a strong correlation between people who have a habit of catastrophizing and people who suffer from depression and depressive related issues. They also discovered such people tended also to engage in blaming themselves for things that go wrong, than people who are less likely to engage in catastrophizing.
Just a footnote, the researchers found no evidence that men or women are more likely to catastrophize more than the other. We show people how to stop catastrophizing on The Fear Course.
*Garnefski, N et al. (2003) Cognitive emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms: differences between males and females. Personality and Individual Differences. Volume 36, Issue 2, January 2004, Pages 267-276
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety | No Comments »
Friday, September 24th, 2010
I am often asked during the one-day Fear Course if there is a difference between women and men in terms of their experience of fear and anxiety; do women have more fear and anxiety than men, are women better at dealing with fear or anxiety than men, etc. There is isn’t really a lot of research evidence about these questions. However I was trawling through some Journals in the last few days and I found a 2009 research article* that looked at the differences between female and male uses of emotion regulation or emotional resilience techniques.
The researchers did a study of 819 students, 208 women and 210 men from Norway and 201 women and 200 men from Brazil, of whom 76.9% were in the 20- to 29-yr. age range to find out what techniques they used to deal with 3 negative emotions:
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Sadness
They found that only 14 techniques were used overall by the subjects. The top two techniques were talking to someone else and talking to yourself (self affirming messages).
However what were 2 really interesting sets of findings:
- The women tended to use a larger range of techniques than the men for anxiety and sadness issues (and the same number for anger), and,
- The women tended to use more collective or social techniques (like talking to other people) than the men. The men were more likely to use individual techniques that did not involve others.
Another question I am often asked is; do more women than men come on the Fear Course? The answer is it is about 50 - 50 overall. Although for some reason I find most courses have either mainly women or others that are mainly men. It is rare to get a course that is 50-50. Why this happens I have no idea.
*Vikan, A., Dias, M. & Nordvik, H. (2009) Perceived efficiency and use of strategies for emotion regulation. Psychological Reports: Volume 104, Issue , pp. 455-467.
KSR7Y3Q2ET45
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, Fear, anxiety, emotion regulation, emotional resilience | No Comments »
Thursday, September 23rd, 2010
Two studies just published in the June 2010 issue of Leadership Quarterly* have shown that individuals who are considered by others to have leadership ability in ‘informal’ situations are also considered to have higher levels of emotional intelligence, ampathy and emotional regulation, in that they were perceived as having a better ability to understand others emotions and be more emotionally balanced. It is interesting this a perception of informal leaders - leaders that do not have the authority of rank. This is about leaders who took on a leadership role in a project with the consensus of the group. Interestingly the leaders self-perception of their level of emotional regulation intelligence wasn’t as high as the rest of the group perceived them to be. This leads to a question - do people with higher levels of EQ (emotional intelligence) ER (emotional regulation / emotional resilience) and empathy naturally become leaders or do people assume that anyone who is an informal leader must have higher levels of EQ and ER?
It is also very interesting that the informal leaders themselves did not think that their own emotional intelligence and emotional regulation/ emotional resilience was any higher than the norm.
Cote, S. Et al. (2010) Emotional intelligence and leadership emergence in small groups. The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 3, June 2010, Pages 496-508
Posted in Emotional Resilience Research, emotion regulation, emotional intelligence, emotional resilience, empathy | 2 Comments »
|
|
