Date of Award

1-1-2016

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences

First Advisor

Kateri McRae, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Candance Upton

Third Advisor

Timothy Sweeny

Fourth Advisor

Benjamin Hankin

Fifth Advisor

Jay Hull

Keywords

Cognitive emotion regulation, Difficulty, Other, Self, Self-focused thought, Success

Abstract

The present dissertation reports a set of three studies that sought to characterize the effects of self-focused cognition on emotion regulation, specifically, cognitive reappraisal. Across the three studies, I investigated the effects of self-distancing, disengagement of self-focused thought, and changing the content of self-focused thought on multiple measures of emotion regulation success and emotion regulation difficulty. Results broadly suggested that disengaging self-focused cognition provides distinct advantages for emotion regulation, which are independent of effects on emotional reactivity. Specifically, I observed that other-focused cognition resulted in equally successful, but less difficult emotion regulation, the ability to more quickly disengage from self-focused thought was associated with greater emotion regulation success, and a greater tendency towards engaging in self-focused thought was associated with increased emotion regulation difficulty. I discuss the possible mechanisms explaining these effects, their specific implications for the study of emotion regulation, as well as their broader implications for the study of self-regulation.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Ana Maria Draghici

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

126 p.

Discipline

Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

Download



Share

COinS