Genetic and Environmental Influences on Emotion Regulation: A Twin Study of Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression
Publication Date
8-2017
Document Type
Article
Organizational Units
College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology
Keywords
Heritability, Behavioral genetics, Cholesky models, Cognitive reappraisal, Emotion regulation
Abstract
Previous studies have established that personality traits related to emotionality are moderately heritable. However, the relative heritability of the strategies people use to regulate emotions is unknown. The present study compared the magnitude of additive genetic, shared environmental, and nonshared environmental influences on 2 commonly used emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In 743 twin pairs (1,486 twins), we replicated previous estimates of heritability of neuroticism (a2 = .41). Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal was significantly less heritable and more influenced by nonshared environment (a2 = .20; e2 = .80) than either neuroticism or suppression (a2 = .35; e2 = .65), another emotion regulation strategy. Finally, Cholesky decomposition modeling suggested that while there were common genetic and environmental influences on neuroticism, reappraisal and suppression, there were also significant nonshared environmental influences common between reappraisal and adaptive emotional functioning after controlling for neuroticism and suppression. These findings highlight that different aspects of emotional processing, even the use of different emotion regulation strategies, are differentially heritable. The importance of the nonshared environmental influences specific to reappraisal and adaptive emotional functioning speaks to the potential impact of social context, social partners, and psychosocial interventions on reappraisal habits.
Copyright Date
8-2017
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
All Rights Reserved.
Publication Statement
Copyright is held by the American Psychological Association. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:
McRae, K., Rhee, S. H., Gatt, J. M., Godinez, D., Williams, L. M., & Gross, J. J. (2017). Genetic and environmental influences on emotion regulation: A twin study of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Emotion, 17(5), 772-777. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000300
Rights Holder
American Psychological Association
Provenance
Received from author
Language
English (eng)
Publication Title
Emotion
Volume
17
Issue
5
First Page
772
Last Page
777
ISSN
1931-1516
PubMed ID
28406678
Recommended Citation
McRae, K., Rhee, S. H., Gatt, J. M., Godinez, D., Williams, L. M., & Gross, J. J. (2017). Genetic and environmental influences on emotion regulation: A twin study of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Emotion, 17(5), 772-777. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000300