James J. Gross

Emotion regulation refers to efforts to change the emotion process in ourselves or others. In this chapter, we first review foundational concepts and define key terms, considering an integrative conceptual framework for understanding emotion regulation—the process model of emotion regulation. The process model identifies five families of regulatory strategies, defined by when they change the emotion generation process. These strategies are embedded in stages in which a need for regulation is identified, a strategy is selected and implemented, and the success of the implementation is monitored. Second, we describe key points at which emotion regulation difficulties can lead to undesired states of affect, followed by strategies that may alleviate these difficulties. Third, we consider adaptive and maladaptive profiles of emotion regulation. Fourth, we describe how interventions might improve how well and how often …

BackgroundAlexithymia is an important transdiagnostic risk factor for emotion-based psychopathologies. However, it remains unclear whether alexithymia questionnaires actually measure alexithymia, or whether they measure emotional distress. Our aim here was to address this discriminant validity concern via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire (PAQ).MethodUnited States general community adults (N = 508) completed the TAS-20, PAQ, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales-21 (DASS-21). EFA was used to examine the latent dimensions underlying these measures' scores.ResultsOur EFA extracted two higher-order factors, an “alexithymia” factor and a “general distress” factor (i.e., depression, anxiety, stress). All PAQ scores loaded cleanly on the alexithymia factor, with no cross-loadings on the distress factor …

PurposeThe prevalence of parental burnout, a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children, varies dramatically across countries and is highest in Western countries characterized by high individualism.MethodIn this study, we examined the mediators of the relationship between individualism measured at the country level and parental burnout measured at the individual level in 36 countries (16,059 parents).ResultsThe results revealed three mediating mechanisms, that is, self-discrepancies between socially prescribed and actual parental selves, high agency and self-directed socialization goals, and low parental task sharing, by which individualism leads to an increased risk of burnout among parents.ConclusionThe results confirm that the three mediators under consideration are all involved, and that mediation was higher for self-discrepancies between socially prescribed and actual …

IntroductionElevated fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE) are thought to play key roles in the maintenance of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Although efficacious therapies exist for SAD, the potential mediating and moderating effects of FNE and FPE on social anxiety treatment outcome have not been examined.MethodsThis sample comprised a secondary analysis of 210 individuals who participated in one of three randomized controlled trials for the treatment of SAD. Participants were randomized to: individual cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), group CBT, community mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), group MBSR, or they were randomized to waitlist and offered treatment after waitlist. Assessments were completed pre- and post-treatment/waitlist and, for the treatment groups, at three-month follow-up.ResultsCBT and MBSR led to greater reductions in FNE and FPE …

Introduction Purrble, a socially assistive robot, was codesigned with children to support in situ emotion regulation. Preliminary evidence has found that LGBTQ+ youth are receptive to Purrble and find it to be an acceptable intervention to assist with emotion dysregulation and their experiences of self-harm. The present study is designed to evaluate the impact of access to Purrble among LGBTQ+ youth who have self-harmful thoughts, when compared with waitlist controls. Methods and analysis The study is a single-blind, randomised control trial comparing access to the Purrble robot with waitlist control. A total of 168 LGBTQ+ youth aged 16–25 years with current self-harmful ideation will be recruited, all based within the UK. The primary outcome is emotion dysregulation (Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Scale-8) measured weekly across a 13-week period, including three pre-deployment timepoints. Secondary …

Alexithymia is widely seen as a risk factor for psychopathology, and is thus of high clinical interest. However, there is ongoing debate about the definition of alexithymia, much of which focuses on its externally oriented thinking (EOT) facet. Cognitive behavioral conceptualizations (ie, the attention-appraisal model) define EOT in a manner specific to emotion processing, as difficulties focusing attention on emotions. Psychoanalytic conceptualizations define EOT more broadly, including difficulties attending to emotions, but also a tendency toward utilitarian thinking focused on the concrete details of the external world, which is closely linked with a reduced capacity for daydreaming. In this paper, across two studies (Ns= 508; 595), we examine the clinical relevance of both EOT conceptualizations via the strength of their associations with a range of clinical symptoms: depression, anxiety, stress, somatic symptoms, alcohol use problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorder symptoms, dissociation, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Cognitive behavioral EOT was operationalised using the Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire and psychoanalytic EOT with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. Across both studies, the cognitive behavioral conceptualization consistently demonstrated stronger relationships with clinical symptoms and explained more variance in regression models. Overall, our findings support the cognitive behavioral conceptualization of EOT, which shows higher clinical relevance.

In the face of unpredictable threat, rapid processing of external events and behavioral mobilization through early psychophysiological responses are crucial for survival. While unpredictable threat generally enhances early processing, it would seem adaptive to particularly increase sensitivity for unexpected events as they may signal danger. To examine this possibility, n = 77 participants performed an auditory oddball paradigm and received unpredictable shocks in threat but not in safe contexts while a stream of frequent (standard) and infrequent (deviant) tones was presented. We assessed event‐related potentials (ERP), heart period (HP), and time‐lagged within‐subject correlations of single‐trial EEG and HP (cardio‐EEG covariance tracing, CECT) time‐locked to the tones. N1 and P2 ERP amplitudes were generally enhanced under threat. The P3 amplitude was enhanced to deviants versus standards and …

An online study of judgments of the emotional valence of positive, negative, or ambiguous faces, scenes, and words, using two different response formats (two alternative forced choice (2AFC) or unipolar ratings).