The Role of Emotion Regulation in Reducing Emotional Distortions of Duration Perception

Emotion regulation strategies are thought to differ in when and how they influence the emotion-generative process. However, no study to date has directly probed the neural bases of two contrasting (e.g., cognitive versus behavioral) emotion regulation strategies. This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine cognitive reappraisal (a cognitive strategy thought to have its impact early in the emotion-generative process) and expressive suppression (a behavioral strategy thought to have its impact later in the emotion-generative process). Seventeen women viewed 15 sec neutral and negative emotion-eliciting films under four conditions--watch-neutral, watch-negative, reappraise-negative, and suppress-negative--while providing emotion experience ratings and having their facial expressions videotaped. Reappraisal resulted in early (0-4.5 sec) prefrontal cortex (PFC) responses, decreased negative emotion experience, and decreased amygdala and insular responses. Suppression produced late (10.5-15 sec) PFC responses, decreased negative emotion behavior and experience, but increased amygdala and insular responses. These findings demonstrate the differential efficacy of reappraisal and suppression on emotional experience, facial behavior, and neural response and highlight intriguing differences in the temporal dynamics of these two emotion regulation strategies.

An emerging literature has begun to document the affective consequences of emotion regulation. Little is known, however, about whether emotion regulation also has cognitive consequences. A process model of emotion suggests that expressive suppression should reduce memory for emotional events but that reappraisal should not. Three studies tested this hypothesis. Study 1 experimentally manipulated expressive suppression during film viewing, showing that suppression led to poorer memory for the details of the film. Study 2 manipulated expressive suppression and reappraisal during slide viewing. Only suppression led to poorer slide memory. Study 3 examined individual differences in typical expressive suppression and reappraisal and found that suppression was associated with poorer self-reported and objective memory but that reappraisal was not. Together, these studies suggest that the cognitive costs of keeping one's cool may vary according to how this is done.

Emotional problems figure prominently in many clinical conditions. Recent efforts to explain and treat these conditions have emphasized the role of emotion dysregulation. However, emotional problems are not always the result of emotion dysregulation, and even when emotional problems do arise from emotion dysregulation, it is necessary to specify precisely what type of emotion dysregulation might be operative. In this review, we present an extended process model of emotion regulation, and we use this model to describe key points at which emotion-regulation difficulties can lead to various forms of psychopathology. These difficulties are associated with (a) identification of the need to regulate emotions, (b) selection among available regulatory options, (c) implementation of a selected regulatory tactic, and (d) monitoring of implemented emotion regulation across time. Implications and future directions for basic research, assessment, and intervention are discussed.