Research
School of Psychology
Emotion regulation entails the process by which individuals manage their emotions. Emotion regulation can be intrinsic where an individual upregulates or downregulates their emotions both consciously and unconsciously (via spontaneous efforts). Emotion regulation can also be extrinsically influenced with the help of others (e.g., Braunstein & Ochsner, 2018). Importantly, emotion regulation has been found to be a key determinant in influencing mental health and wellbeing (e.g., Gross, Uusberg, & Uusberg, 2019). Failure to control or manage emotions may lead to the development of mental health disorders (Gross et al., 2019). Similarly, the ability to effectively regulate emotions may enhance individual wellbeing (e.g., Côté, Gyurak, & Levenson, 2010). An individual may deploy many ways to deal with a single emotion (Ford, Gross, & Gruber, 2019). Hence, one of the key research areas in this field has been to identify adaptive emotion regulation strategies (Naragon-Gainey, McMahon, & Chacko, 2017). Nevertheless, most of the research studies focused on emotion regulation strategies that are utilised to downregulate negative emotions Kashdan, Young, & Machell, 2015). To date, there has been little empirical evidence to establish an association between specific upregulation strategies of positive emotions and wellbeing (Livingstone & Srivastava, 2012). Relatedly, any upregulation attempt can occur at three different times; during, before, and after positive events (Quoidbach et al., 2015). Therefore, regulatory strategies may have differential impacts on the outcome of upregulation, depending on which point they are activated (Dunn et al., 2018; Quoidbach et al., 2010, 2015). However, to date, there are only a couple of studies experimentally manipulated the timing in enhancing the upregulation of emotions, and findings have been mixed and inconclusive (Burr et al., 2017; Dunn et al., 2018).
In summary, the majority of studies to date have mostly focused on downregulation of negative emotions, rather than upregulation of positive emotions (Kashdan, Young, & Machell, 2015). Yet only a limited number of studies have assessed the association between positive upregulation and wellbeing. It is plausible that state and trait upregulation strategies would have a differential impact on various components of wellbeing. Ascertaining differential impact may assist clinicians in developing or fine-tune existing intervention to strengthen the evidence base of psychotherapy interventions. Accordingly, the objective of the current study was to extend previous findings on the association between upregulation of positive emotions and wellbeing. This study will experimentally manipulate all three possible timings of emotion upregulation (before, during, and after a positive anticipated event/experience) in a laboratory setting. In particular, we shall focus on savouring as an upregulation strategy in this research. In this experiment, participants will be asked to savour their positive experiences resulting from 1. Anticipating a positive event. 2. A positive mood induction during lab session. 3. Recalling a positive event from the past. These three groups’ change of positive affect will be compared against a control group. In the control group, participants will be asked to write about their daily morning routines instead of anticipating/positive mood induction/recalling.