A growing literature has begun to document the effects of compassion training on a variety of important interpersonal behaviors (e.g., helping behavior). What is not yet well understood, however, is what impact compassion training has on affect and affect regulation. To examine this issue, we implemented a 9-week compassion training program in which 51 adults provided twice-daily ratings of four affective states (anxiety, calm, fatigue, alertness) as well as their desire and capability to regulate these affective states. In addition, participants provided weekly responses regarding five specific regulatory strategies. Analysis of day-to-day trajectories of affective experience showed a decrease in anxiety and increase in calmness. Day-to-day trajectories of affect regulation demonstrated that participants were more likely to choose to accept and thus not influence or modulate affective experience (as opposed to dampen, enhance, or hold on to or maintain the affective state). At the same time, participants also reported being more capable in meeting their respective regulatory goals. Finally, analysis of week-to-week trajectories of specific regulatory strategies over the course of the compassion training program demonstrated that participants shifted to lesser use of expressive suppression and greater acceptance when experiencing stress/anxiety. These results suggest that interventions such as compassion training may help modulate specific affective states and modify the use of and self-efficacy for specific regulatory strategies.

There is limited research exploring attachment style and defenses in adolescents. The purpose of the current research is to explore the relationship between adolescent attachment style and development of defense mechanisms, as well as attachment style and problem behaviors. A total of 1487 students from two California high-schools completed three self-report questionnaires to establish defense mechanisms, psychiatric symptoms, and attachment style. Attachment styles characterized by a positive self-image predict greater levels of mature defense mechanisms, and lower levels of immature defense mechanisms, both in the interpersonal and intrapsychic domains. Relationships between insecure attachment styles and psychopathology were mediated by greater levels of immature defense mechanisms. These results provide initial compelling evidence that: a) attachment style is an important determinant of the type of defense mechanisms utilized by the individual to maintain psychological stability; and b) defense mechanisms serve to transmit the detrimental effects of insecure attachment style on psychological health.

Evaluative contexts can be stressful, but relatively little is known about how different individuals who vary in responses to self-evaluation make emotion regulatory choices to cope in these situations. To address this gap, participants who vary in self-esteem gave an impromptu speech, rated how they perceived they had performed on multiple evaluative dimensions, and subsequently chose between disengaging attention from emotional processing (distraction) and engaging with emotional processing via changing its meaning (reappraisal), while waiting to receive feedback regarding these evaluative dimensions. According to our framework, distraction can offer stronger short-term relief than reappraisal, but, distraction is costly in the long run relative to reappraisal because it does not allow learning from evaluative feedback. We predicted and found that participants with lower (but not higher) self-esteem react defensively to threat of failure by seeking short-term relief via distraction over the long-term benefit of reappraisal, as perceived failure increases. Implications for the understanding of emotion regulation and self-esteem are discussed.

Recent studies have begun to document the diversity of ways people regulate their emotions. However, one unanswered question is why people regulate their emotions as they do in everyday life. In the present research, we examined how social context and goals influence strategy selection in daily high points and low points. As expected, suppression was particularly tied to social features of context: it was used more when others were present, especially non-close partners, and when people had instrumental goals, especially more interpersonal ones (e.g., avoid conflict). Distraction and reappraisal were used more when regulating for hedonic reasons (e.g., to feel better), but these strategies were also linked to certain instrumental goals (e.g., getting work done). When contra-hedonic regulation occurred, it primarily took the form of dampening positive emotion during high points. Suppression was more likely to be used for contra-hedonic regulation, whereas reappraisal and distraction were used more for pro-hedonic regulation. Overall, these findings highlight the social nature of emotion regulation and underscore the importance of examining regulation in both positive and negative contexts.

Sharing a classroom environment with other victimized peers has been shown to mitigate the adverse effects of peer victimization on children’s social and psychological adjustment. By extension, this study hypothesized that classroom reductions in the proportion of victims would be harmful for children who remain victimized. Data were collected at the end of 2 subsequent school years from 4,466 fourth- to sixth-graders (mean age = 11 years), as part of the implementation of the Finnish anti-bullying program KiVa (an acronym for Kiusaamista Vastaan, “against bullying”). Multiple regression analyses were conducted on a subsample of 170 stable victims (children reporting being victimized at least 2–3 times a month at both time points) to test whether a decrease in the proportion of victims in their classrooms had an effect on their adjustment at Time 2. Stable victims felt more depressed, more socially anxious and were less liked at Time 2 in classrooms where the proportion of victims had decreased in 1 year compared to stable victims in classrooms where it had increased or remained the same. These effects were not moderated by the intervention status of the classroom. Paradoxically, an improved social environment can be detrimental for some children. These findings point to the necessity to maintain anti-bullying intervention efforts especially when successful.

We examined whether social anxiety severity at pre-treatment would moderate the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or aerobic exercise (AE) for generalized social anxiety disorder. MBSR and AE produced equivalent reductions in weekly social anxiety symptoms. Improvements were moderated by pre-treatment social anxiety severity.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have social and communication deficits and difficulties regulating emotions. The brain bases of these socio-affective deficits are not yet clear, but one candidate is structural connectivity in the left uncinate fasciculus, which connects limbic temporal and frontal areas thought to be involved in socio-affective processing. In this study, we assessed white matter structure in the left and right uncinate fasciculus in 18 high-functioning individuals with ASD and 18 group-matched typically developing (TD) controls using Diffusion Tensor Imaging. To test specificity of the associations, we also examined the association between both uncinate fasciculi and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Compared to TD individuals, individuals with ASD had significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left and right uncinate. Group status significantly moderated the association between left uncinate and socio-affective deficits, indicating that within the ASD group, FA was associated with socio-affective deficits: Individuals with ASD with lower FA in the left uncinate had significantly more social and emotion regulation deficits. There was no association with restricted and repetitive behaviors. This study provides evidence that the left uncinate may play a critical role in socio-affective skills in individuals with ASD.

The subjective experience of anxiety plays a central role in cognitive behavioral models of social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, much remains to be learned about the temporal dynamics of anxiety elicited by feared social situations. The aims of the current study were: (1) to compare anxiety trajectories during a speech task in individuals with SAD (n=135) versus healthy controls (HCs; n=47), and (2) to compare the effects of CBT on anxiety trajectories with a waitlist control condition. SAD was associated with higher levels of anxiety and greater increases in anticipatory anxiety compared to HCs, but not differential change in anxiety from pre- to post-speech. CBT was associated with decreases in anxiety from pre- to post-speech but not with changes in absolute levels of anticipatory anxiety or rates of change in anxiety during anticipation. The findings suggest that anticipatory experiences should be further incorporated into exposures.

Major depressive disorder is characterized by emotional dysfunction, but mood states in daily life are not well understood. This study examined complex explanatory models of daily stress and coping mechanisms that trigger and maintain daily negative affect and (lower) positive affect in depression. Sixty-three depressed patients completed perfectionism measures, and then completed daily questionnaires of stress appraisals, coping, and affect for 7 consecutive days. Multilevel structural equation modeling (MSEM) demonstrated that, across many stressors, when the typical individual with depression perceives more criticism than usual, he/she uses more avoidant coping and experiences higher event stress than usual, and this is connected to daily increases in negative affect as well as decreases in positive affect. In parallel, results showed that perceived control, less avoidant coping, and problem-focused coping commonly operate together when daily positive affect increases. MSEM also showed that avoidant coping tendencies and ongoing stress, in combination, explain why people with depression and higher self-critical perfectionism maintain daily negative affect and lower positive affect. These findings advance a richer and more detailed understanding of specific stress and coping patterns to target in order to more effectively accomplish the two predominant therapy goals of decreasing patients' distress and strengthening resilience.

Maladaptive behavior is common in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the factors that give rise to maladaptive behavior in this context are not well understood. The present study examined the role of emotion experience and emotion regulation in maladaptive behavior in individuals with ASD and typically developing (TD) participants. Thirty-one individuals with ASD and 28 TD participants and their parents completed questionnaires assessing emotion experience, regulation, and maladaptive behavior. Compared to TD participants, individuals with ASD used cognitive reappraisal less frequently, which was associated with increased negative emotion experience, which in turn was related to greater levels of maladaptive behavior. By decreasing negative emotions, treatments targeting adaptive emotion regulation may therefore reduce maladaptive behaviors in individuals with ASD.

UNLABELLEDWe examined whether social anxiety severity at pre-treatment would moderate the impact of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) or aerobic exercise (AE) for generalized social anxiety disorder. MBSR and AE produced equivalent reductions in weekly social anxiety symptoms. Improvements were moderated by pre-treatment social anxiety severity.PRACTITIONER POINTSMindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and aerobic exercise (AE) are effective in reducing symptoms of social anxiety. Pre-treatment social anxiety severity can be used to inform treatment recommendations. Both MBSR and AE produced equivalent reductions in weekly levels of social anxiety symptoms. MBSR appears to be most effective for patients with lower pre-treatment social anxiety symptom severity. AE appears to be most effective for patients with higher pre-treatment social anxiety symptom severity.

Individuals in close relationships help each other in many ways, from listening to each other's problems, to making each other feel understood, to providing practical support. However, it is unclear if these supportive behaviors track each other across days and as stable tendencies in close relationships. Further, although past work suggests that giving support improves providers' well-being, the specific features of support provision that improve providers' psychological lives remain unclear. We addressed these gaps in knowledge through a daily diary study that comprehensively assessed support provision and its effects on well-being. We found that providers' emotional support (e.g., empathy) and instrumental support represent distinct dimensions of support provision, replicating prior work. Crucially, emotional support, but not instrumental support, consistently predicted provider well-being. These 2 dimensions also interacted, such that instrumental support enhanced well-being of both providers and recipients, but only when providers were emotionally engaged while providing support. These findings illuminate the nature of support provision and suggest targets for interventions to enhance well-being.

Mind wandering, or the tendency for attention to drift to task-irrelevant thoughts, has been associated with worse intra- and inter-personal functioning. Utilizing daily experience sampling with 51 adults during 9-weeks of a compassion meditation program, we examined effects on mind wandering (to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant topics) and caring behaviors for oneself and others. Results indicated that compassion meditation decreased mind wandering to neutral topics and increased caring behaviors towards oneself. When collapsing across topics, mind wandering did not serve as an intermediary between the frequency of compassion meditation practice and caring behaviors, though mind wandering to pleasant and unpleasant topics was linked to both variables. A path analysis revealed that greater frequency of compassion meditation practice was related to reductions in mind wandering to unpleasant topics and increases in mind wandering to pleasant topics, both of which were related to increases in caring behaviors for oneself and others.

The Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation (SOC-ER) framework suggests that (1) emotion regulation (ER) strategies require resources and that (2) higher levels of relevant resources may increase ER success. In the current experiment, we tested the specific hypothesis that individual differences in one internal class of resources, namely cognitive ability, would contribute to greater success using cognitive reappraisal (CR), a form of ER in which one reinterprets the meaning of emotion-eliciting situations. To test this hypothesis, 60 participants (30 younger and 30 older adults) completed standardized neuropsychological tests that assess fluid and crystallized cognitive ability, as well as a CR task in which participants reinterpreted the meaning of sad pictures in order to alter (increase or decrease) their emotions. In a control condition, they viewed the pictures without trying to change how they felt. Throughout the task, we indexed subjective emotional experience (self-reported ratings of emotional intensity), expressive behavior (corrugator muscle activity), and autonomic physiology (heart rate and electrodermal activity) as measures of emotional responding. Multilevel models were constructed to explain within-subjects variation in emotional responding as a function of ER contrasts comparing increase or decrease conditions with the view control condition and between-subjects variation as a function of cognitive ability and/or age group (older, younger). As predicted, higher fluid cognitive ability-indexed by perceptual reasoning, processing speed, and working memory-was associated with greater success using reappraisal to alter emotional responding. Reappraisal success did not vary as a function of crystallized cognitive ability or age group. Collectively, our results provide support for a key tenet of the SOC-ER framework that higher levels of relevant resources may confer greater success at emotion regulation.

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) is a commonly used emotion-regulation strategy that has been shown to influence affective, cognitive, and social outcomes. Although progress has been made in elucidating the mechanisms underlying CR, the role of attention remains unclear. In the present study, we investigated the role of attention in CR by tracking participants' gazes during the presentation of videos depicting people in negative moods. Participants were asked to attend naturally or to use reappraisal to increase or decrease their emotions while viewing the videos. After each video, they rated their negative emotion experience. Results showed that participants spent more time looking at the emotional regions in the target's face (eyes and mouth) when asked to up-regulate their emotions, compared with when they simply attended to the videos. The reverse pattern was found for down-regulation of emotions. In addition, the effects of cognitive reappraisal on negative emotion experience were mediated by the time spent looking at the emotional regions, with a stronger effect for the down-regulation instruction. Finally, direct effects of regulation instruction on negative emotion were observed even when controlling for time spent viewing emotional regions, which suggests that attention and CR are distinct components that uniquely influence negative emotions. These results complement and extend previous findings on the role of attention in CR, and highlight the importance of taking attentional mechanisms into account when designing CR training.

OBJECTIVE There is growing interest in the role of transdiagnostic processes in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of mental disorders (Nolen-Hoeksema & Watkins, 2011). Two such transdiagnostic processes-rumination and reappraisal-are the focus of the present study. The main objective was to examine the roles of rumination (thought to be harmful) and reappraisal (thought to be helpful) in adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD). METHOD We conducted a randomized controlled trial of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with 75 adults with SAD and examined pre- to post-CBT changes as well as weekly fluctuations in rumination, reappraisal, and social anxiety symptoms. RESULTS Socially anxious individuals' baseline rumination (brooding) scores predicted weekly levels of social anxiety, rumination, and reappraisal, whereas baseline reappraisal scores did not. Greater weekly rumination was associated with greater weekly social anxiety, but reappraisal was not related to social anxiety. CONCLUSION These findings suggest that rumination may have a more significant role than reappraisal in understanding fluctuations in social anxiety during CBT for SAD.

The management of unhelpful negative emotions has been addressed by two literatures, one focused on coping via humor, and the other focused on emotion regulation. In the present study, we directly compared humorous coping with conventional (serious) reappraisal. We expected humorous coping to be more effective than serious reappraisal in the short and longer term. Fifty-seven participants used either humorous coping, serious reappraisal, or attended naturally while viewing negative pictures and then rated their positive and negative emotional responses. One week later, participants viewed and rated the pictures again. In the short-term, while humorous coping was more difficult than serious reappraisal, it was more effective in down-regulating negative and up-regulating positive emotions. In the longer-term, both strategies had beneficial effects on positive emotions while humorous coping was more beneficial than serious reappraisal in down-regulating negative emotions. This is the first study that empirically shows short and longer-term beneficial effects of humorous coping versus serious reappraisal in the context of emotions elicited by negative stimuli.

This study utilized data from the evaluation of the Finnish KiVa program in testing the prediction that school bullies' high perceived popularity would impede the success of anti-bullying interventions. Multiple-group structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses were conducted on a subsample of 911 third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders identified as perpetrators of bullying. They belonged to 77 Finnish schools, including 39 schools implementing the KiVa program and 38 control schools. Data on peer-reported bullying and perceived popularity were collected before program implementation and one year later. Controlling for sex, age, and initial levels of bullying, KiVa participation resulted in lower rates of bullying (indicated by fewer peer nominations) after one year for bullies of low and medium popularity. However, there was no significant effect for those high in popularity, suggesting that popular bullies are less responsive to anti-bullying interventions than less popular bullies.