•The construct of effortful control encompasses an individual’s ability to focus and shift attention, inhibit undesirable approach behaviors, and perform an action in spite of strong aversion to such action (Skowron & Dendy 2004).

•This ability can be seen across the lifespan from infant reactivity and accompanying self-regulation to individual differences of temperamental ultimately culminating as the core of personality (Rothbart, Ahadi, & Evans, 2000).

•Emotion regulation has been defined as the processes by which an individual modulates emotional experience, the intensive and temporal features of emotion arousal, and emotional expression (Gross, 1998b).

•Emotion regulation manifests when an individual must control their approach behaviors (e.g. laughing too loud while at the movie theater) and their avoidance emotions (e.g. fleeing from your home due to the sounds made by the wind).

•The state mood of the individual or the amount of stress affecting the person at a given point may affect that individual’s ability to regulate his or her emotions whether the emotion is positive or negative.

•Pearson’s correlations•individual’s amount of effortful control is positively related with the suppression subscale of emotional regulation (r=.55, p<.03) and negative emotionality subscale (r=.49 p<.05).•effortful control negatively correlated with depressive (r=-.75, p<.01), anxious (r=-.78, p<.01), and stressful (r=-.74, p<.01)•Depressive (r=-.55, p<.02) and anxious (r=-.58, p<.02) mood states related significantly to decreased ability to identify emotional experiences while the negative relationship with stress states was marginally significant (r=-.45, p<.06).

Influences of affective states:Relationships between effortful control and emotion regulation

Stephens, C.L., Knepp, M.M. & Perez-Rivera, M.B.

INTRODUCTION

HYPOTHESES

RESULTS

METHODOLOGY

•Significant differences were found between high and low depressive (t=2.29 p<.05), anxious (t=4.35, p<.01), and stress (t=3.89, p<.01) groups pertaining to levels of effortful control (Figure 1).

Address correspondence to C. Stephens, cstephens@vt.edu

•Eighteen undergraduate students (12 women, 6 men; 72% Caucasian; mean age 21).•Subjects were given an effortful control questionnaire (ATQ-S-EC; Rothbart et.al. 2000), an emotional regulation questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John 2003), an affect self-report (ASR; Nyklicek, et al. 1997) and a measure of state mood (DASS-S; Lovibond & Lovibond 1995).

Presented at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, Washington, DC, May 2007

DISCUSSION

Subsequent regression analyses underscored the existence of these relationships (Figure 2-5).

•These findings necessitate further investigation of the relationship between effortful control and the specific emotion regulation strategies: suppression and expression of negative emotionality.•Additionally, the impact of affective state on emotion identification requires further study.•Finally, the authors suggest examination of trait/clinical depressive, anxious, and stressful states and their links to emotion regulation.

•With regard to the relationship between effortful control and emotion regulation, it was hypothesized that individuals high in effortful control have increased abilities to override natural inclinations in both typical and extreme approach-avoid situations thus demonstrating better emotion regulation.

•A second hypothesis predicted the mood of the individual will affect both their effortful control and emotion regulation abilities. For example, depressive and anxious mood states will negatively impact the emotional control of an individual.

•Finally, individuals who have difficulty handling stress will possess weakened attributes in effortful control and emotion regulation.

Affective State and Effortful Control

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Figure 1. Individuals scoring high on state depression, anxiety, and stress reported significantly lower effortful control.

Figure 2-5. Effortful control as it relates to emotion regulation (suppression or negative emotionality). The connection between affective state and identification of emotion % correct .

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*p<.05