Citation

Cavanagh SR, Fitzgerald EJ, Urry HL. Emotion 2014; 14(2): 235-240.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Tufts University.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/a0035422

PMID

24708504

Abstract

Frequent and successful use of cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy that involves rethinking the meaning of an emotional event in order to change one's emotional response, has been linked in everyday life to positive outcomes such as higher well-being. Whether we should expect this association to be maintained in a strong, temporally and spatially close emotional context is an unexplored question that might have important implications for our understanding of emotion regulation and its relations to psychological functioning. In this study of members of the U. S. Embassy Tokyo community in the months following the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis in Japan, self-reported use of cognitive reappraisal was not related to psychological functioning, but demonstrated success using cognitive reappraisal to decrease feelings of unpleasantness in response to disaster-related pictures on a performance-based task was associated with fewer symptoms of depression and posttraumatic stress. Moreover, emotional reactivity to these pictures was associated with greater symptomatology. These results suggest that situational intensity may be an important moderator of reappraisal and psychological functioning relationships. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en