Friends and therapists often encourage people in distress to say how they feel (i.e., name their emotions) with the hope that identifying their emotions will help them cope. Although lay and some psychological theories posit that emotion naming should facilitate subsequent emotion regulation, there is little research directly testing this question. Here, we report on two experimental studies that test how naming the emotions evoked by aversive images impacts subsequent regulation of those emotions. In study 1 (
How does occupational identity shape emotional experience? Prior work has largely framed occupation and emotion either in terms of how differences in occupational status structure the experience of powerful, negative emotions or how cultural norms enforce types of acceptable emotional expression in workplaces. Complementing this work by using an identity-centered approach, this paper asks how being in one occupational identity versus another influences the emotions one is likely to experience in everyday life. I argue that one’s occupational identity generates daily interaction sets with typical others, which create opportunities for identity maintenance and confirmation. Affect Control Theory predicts that when individuals confirm identities within an interaction, they will experience the characteristic emotion of the identity. Using data from the General Social Survey’s 1996 emotions module, I find support for the hypothesis that individuals will report experiencing emotions that are closer in cultural meaning to the characteristic emotion of their occupational identity more often than emotions that are more different in cultural meaning. I additionally explore how this relationship depends on the social location of the individual. I find that this relationship is stronger for men, those with higher income, and more educational credentials.
more » « less- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10362147
- Publisher / Repository:
- SAGE Publications
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- American Behavioral Scientist
- Volume:
- 67
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0002-7642
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 100-124
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract N = 80), participants were randomly assigned into one of four between-subjects conditions in which they either (i) passively observed aversive images, (ii) named the emotions that these images made them feel, (iii) regulated their emotions by reappraising the meaning of images, or (iv) both named and regulated their emotions. Analyses of self-reported negative affect revealed that emotion naming impeded emotion regulation via reappraisal. Participants who named their emotions before reappraising reported feelingworse than those who regulated without naming. Study 2 (N = 60) replicated these findings in a within-participants design, demonstrated that emotion naming also impeded regulation via mindful acceptance, and showed that observed effects were unrelated to a measure of social desirability, thereby mitigating the concern of experimenter demand. Together, these studies show that the impact of emotion naming on emotion regulation opposes common intuitions: instead of facilitating emotion regulation via reappraisal or acceptance, constructing an instance of a specific emotion category by giving it a name may “crystalize” one’s affective experience and make it more resistant to modification. -
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