The Effect Of Perspective-Picking Ability On The Effectiveness Of Dissociated Reappraisal Of Emotion Regulation Strategies

Emotions have a variety of effects on our cognitive,physical,psychological and social life.Emotion regulation is the basic element of mental health.Detached reappraisal refers to simulating a new perspective to change the psychological distance between the stimulating situation and oneself,so as to change the emotional impact of the stimulating situation on oneself.In both healthy and clinical people,studies from self-report measurement,neuroimaging markers and psychophysiology have proved that detached reappraisal is an effective emotion regulation strategy.A typical detached reappraisal needs four processes: self projection,stimulus perception,explanation and emotional self reflection.Self projection is defined as the ability to transfer perspective from here and now to a simulated time,place or person.Moreover,self projection exists a shared brain network,which supports various forms of self projection,including thinking about the future(Prospect),recalling the past,conceiving other people’s views(theory of mind)and navigation.Theory of mind is the individual’s reasoning or cognition of others’ psychological state and its relationship with others’ behavior.The three aspects of theory of mind are corresponding to the visual,cognitive and emotional perspective taking.Perspective taking is defined as the ability to think from the perspective of others.Research shows that a person with good opinion selection skills should be able to view an event from another person’s perspective,thereby predicting their beliefs,desires,emotions and intentions.Besides,many personality traits are conducive to the successful emotion regulation.For example,studies on children and adolescents showed that the effectiveness of detached reappraisal emotion regulation strategy increases with individual development.In conclusion,the individual’s perspective taking ability may be a potential predictor of the success of detached reappraisal emotion regulation strategy.Individuals with high ability of perspective taking may be better at adopting the detached reappraisal.However,individuals with low perspective taking ability may rarely benefit from the detached reappraisal.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to explore the influence of the individual difference variable of perspective taking ability on the emotion regulation effect of detached reappraisal.In Study 1,the subjects were randomly divided into control group(natural viewing group),detached reappraisal group and distraction group.The film fragment "City of Life and Death" was used to induce the anger of the subjects,the Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI)-perspective taking(PT)subscale was used to measure the participants’ perspective taking ability,to see whether the level of the participants’ perspective taking ability would affect the regulatory effect of tow types of emotion regulation strategies(detached reappraisal and distraction)on anger.The results showed that,compared with the natural viewing group,the emotion regulation effect of the detached reappraisal group was affected by the individual’s perspective taking ability,while the emotion regulation effect of the distraction group was not affected by the individual’s perspective taking ability.These results indicate that the regulation effect of detached reappraisal is influenced by the individual’s perspective taking ability.In Study 2,the Interpersonal Reactivity Index(IRI)-perspective taking(PT)subscale was used to measure the subjects’ perspective taking ability.According to the scale scores,the subjects were divided into low perspective taking group and high perspective taking group,and then the two groups were randomly divided into two groups to accept two types of emotion regulation strategies(detached reappraisal and distraction).The film fragment "City of Life and Death" was used to induce the anger of the subjects,and the film fragment "Lost On Journey" was used to induce the happy of the subjects.In order to further explore whether the subjects with high perspective taking ability and those with low perspective taking ability have differences in emotion regulation by using detached reappraisal and distraction emotion regulation strategy,and whether such differences are consistent in positive emotions and negative emotions.The results showed that,people with high perspective taking ability were better at regulating emotions,whether happy or angry,than people with low perspective taking ability.For the detached reappraisal emotion regulation strategy,people with high ability of perspective taking had better regulation effect than people with low ability of perspective taking,and the effect was the same for happy and angry emotions.However,for distraction emotion regulation strategies,there was no significant difference in emotion regulation effect between people with high perspective taking ability and people with low perspective taking ability.These results indicated that people with higher perspective taking ability can more effectively use the detached reappraisal emotion regulation strategy,and this strategy is consistent in regulating positive and negative emotions.The primary goal of emotion regulation should be to maximize the effectiveness of emotion regulation.Individual differences in cognition may help to explain individual differences in successful emotion regulation.Therefore,to evaluate the individual differences of cognitive resources related to the emotion regulation strategy of detached reappraisal can produce effective predictors of the success of the emotion regulation strategy of detached reappraisal.Then,these predictors can be used to target those individuals who are more likely to be effective in adopting detached reappraisal strategies,which is a particularly important goal in the era of personalized medicine.Therefore,this study may have some practical significance,that is,it is related to the treatment of emotional disorders(anxiety disorders and depression).Based on the results of this study,treatment providers may expect that people with high perspective taking ability will benefit more from opinion change oriented treatment strategies than people with low perspective taking ability.