The Regulation Effects Of Acceptance On Negative Emotional And Aggressive Behavioral Responses To Social Exclusion

Good interpersonal communication and social relations are very important for individuals’ psychosocial development.However,social exclusion,as a typical negative social experience,also exists widely in daily life,and it is usually accompanied by a variety of negative consequences.Previous studies have found that social exclusion not only induces negative emotions such as anger,sadness and hurt feelings,but also leads to increased aggressive behavior.Meanwhile,compared to other negative emotions,anger plays a particularly vital role in antisocial aggressive responses to social exclusion.Therefore,it is very important to effectively alleviate the negative impacts of social exclusion,which will help maintain individuals’ good social functions.Some existing studies have explored the ways to decrease the negative consequences of social exclusion from different perspectives,but there are still some limitations.Namely,in terms of emotion regulation related to social exclusion,existing studies have paid less attention to the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in this context,except for reappraisal.Considering that cognitive reappraisal may cause individuals to deny the important features of the situation and consume cognitive resources,it is of great significance to explore the effectiveness of other adaptive emotion regulation strategies.For the regulation of aggressive behavior,few studies have explored it from the perspective of emotion regulation.Research has demonstrated that anger has a good predictive effect on aggression,so reducing anger during social exclusion through emotion regulation is likely to regulate subsequent aggressive behavior.As an adaptive emotion regulation strategy,acceptance plays an important role in many contemporary psychotherapies.This strategy emphasizes on being open to and embracing emotions and feelings without trying to change them.Numerous studies have revealed the benefits of acceptance strategies for mental health.Specifically,individuals with higher trait acceptance experience lower negative emotions and higher positive emotions,and exhibit less aggressive behavior.Moreover,the single-use acceptance strategy in the laboratory and the acceptance-based psychotherapies can effectively regulate individuals’ emotional state,reduce avoidance behavior and improve social relationships.Nevertheless,the instruction-based acceptance strategy mentioned above is a process of conscious emotion regulation,which requires a lot of cognitive resources.And many studies have proved that unconscious emotion regulation can achieve the same goal of emotion regulation without or with less consumption of cognitive resources.Moreover,existing studies have also shown that unconscious acceptance can effectively regulate individuals’ subjective emotional and physiological responses to non-social frustrating situations.Based on this,the present study suggests that the acceptance strategy,which is an adaptive emotion regulation strategy,may be effective for reducing negative emotions in social exclusion situations.In addition,given the significant predictive effect of anger on aggressive behavior after exclusion,the acceptance strategy may decrease individuals’ aggressive responses by reducing anger during social exclusion.So far,although existing studies have investigated the relationship between trait acceptance and negative emotions in exclusion situations,there are still many questions to be further explored on the relationship between acceptance and the negative effects resulting from social exclusion.Therefore,the present research conducted one preliminary study and two studies to comprehensively examine the effects of trait acceptance,conscious acceptance and unconscious acceptance on individual’s emotional experience and aggressive behavior in the social exclusion situation,as well as the mediating role of anger between acceptance strategies and aggressive behavior.The preliminary study,which used the recall paradigm to induce social exclusion,aimed to test the correlational relationship between trait acceptance and negative consequences(negative emotions and aggressive tendencies)in the context of social exclusion,and the mediating role of anger between the level of trait acceptance and aggressive tendencies.Based on this,from the perspective of causal relationship,two studies(study1 and study 2)were used to further explore the regulation effects of the acceptance strategy on the negative effects of social exclusion through experimental manipulation.Study 1 mainly investigated the regulation effects of conscious acceptance and unconscious acceptance on negative emotions(including overall negative emotions and different types of negative emotions)following the social exclusion phase and the emotional recovery phase.Study 2 firstly repeated the regulation effects of the two acceptance strategies on the emotional responses to exclusion situation in study 1.And then it mainly explored whether the two acceptance strategies also decreased aggressive behavior after exclusion,as well as whether anger mediated these effects.In both studies,participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups including conscious acceptance group,unconscious acceptance group and control group(no regulation group).Cyberball game was used to induce social exclusion,and the sentence unscrambled task was used to prime unconscious emotion acceptance.Moreover,aggressive behavior in study 2 was measured by the hot sauce paradigm.During the two studies,participants were required to evaluate their subjective emotional states after the baseline,social exclusion and the recovery phase.The results showed that(a)trait acceptance was significantly and negatively associated with the overall negative emotions and different types of negative emotions(including anger,sadness,hurt feelings,and other negative emotions),and also positively associated with positive emotions in the social exclusion situation.Besides,trait acceptance negatively predicted negative emotions following social exclusion,but it did not predict positive emotions.(b)Trait acceptance could also significantly negatively predict individuals’ aggressive tendency towards the excluder after experiencing social exclusion,and only anger mediated this relationship.(c)In terms of emotion regulation,compared to the control group,participants in both conscious acceptance and unconscious acceptance groups felt more positive which was reflected by valence,and also felt less overall negative emotions and anger following social exclusion.Meanwhile,both conscious and unconscious acceptance groups reduced the decrease in positive emotional responses to exclusion,relative to the control group,but the unconscious acceptance group had a more stable protective effect on positive emotions.In addition,for emotional recovery,the two acceptance groups displayed better recovery than the control group to some extent.Notably,conscious acceptance and unconscious acceptance showed the same emotion regulation effects on these emotion indicators.(d)In terms of the regulation of aggressive behavior,both conscious and unconscious acceptance groups could significantly decrease aggression resulting from social exclusion compared to the control group.Moreover,anger uniquely accounted for the effects of the two forms of acceptance strategies on aggressive behavior.To sum up,this research proves the regulation effects of acceptance on negative emotions and aggressive behavior in the context of social exclusion,and provides a new method to effectively alleviate the negative consequences of social exclusion from the perspective of emotion regulation.Furthermore,based on the enrichment of empirical research on acceptance strategies,this study emphasizes the regulating role of unconscious acceptance strategy in interpersonal frustration situations,and highlights the effectiveness and important application values of unconscious emotion regulation.