A linguistic signature of psychological distancing in emotion regulation.

Abstract

Effective emotion regulation is critical for mental health and well-being, rendering insight into underlying mechanisms that facilitate this crucial skill invaluable. We combined principles of cognitive linguistics and basic affective science to test whether shifting components of one's language might foster effective emotion regulation. In particular, we explored bidirectional relations between emotion regulation and linguistic signatures of psychological distancing. In Study 1, we assessed whether people spontaneously distance their language (i.e., shift their word use to be less socially and temporally proximate) when regulating emotions. Participants transcribed their thoughts while either passively viewing or actively regulating their emotional responses to negative images. Regulation increased linguistic markers of social and temporal distance, and participants who showed greater linguistic distancing were more successful regulators. Study 2 reversed this relation and investigated whether distancing one's language spontaneously regulated one's emotions. Participants wrote about negative images either using psychologically "close" or "distant" language in physical, social, and temporal domains. All 3 domains of linguistic distancing spontaneously reduced negative affect. Distancing language also "bled" across domains (e.g., temporal distancing spontaneously produced social distancing). This suggests that distancing one's language in 1 domain (e.g., reducing use of present-tense verbs) produces shifts in deep representations of psychological distance that are measurable across domains (e.g., reduced use of the word "I"). Results extend understanding of language-emotion interactions and reveal novel strategies for reducing negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record

Predicting emotional health indicators from linguistic evidence of psychological distancing

“…Indeed, recent empirical research has shown how distancing oneself from a negative situation, including by appraising the situation as an objective, impartial observer, or as spatially or temporally far away, can be an adaptive way to regulate one's emotions (Denny & Ochsner, ; Kross, Ayduk, & Mischel, ; Ochsner, Silvers, & Buhle, ; Trope & Liberman, ). More recently, linguistic evidence of psychological distancing obtained via analysis of expressive writing has been shown to be associated with greater emotion regulation efficacy (Nook, Schleider, & Somerville, ). Although a growing body of evidence is beginning to coalesce around the beneficial effects of distancing in a variety of populations and contexts (Kross & Ayduk, ), the question of whether psychologically distanced language is associated with adaptive health indicators is less clear and represented the focus of the current work; such relationships, if observed, may elucidate dependencies among language, emotion, and health, and may probe the translational value of linguistic distancing as an emotion regulation intervention.…”

“…Recent work has begun to elucidate the linguistic mechanisms by which psychological distancing impacts emotion regulation (e.g., by speaking in the third person; Kross & Ayduk, ; Kross et al, ). In addition, Nook et al () examined whether distancing one's language spontaneously regulated one's emotions after writing about negative images using psychologically “close” or “distant” language in social (i.e., self‐related), spatial, and temporal domains. The authors used Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, Boyd, & Francis, ) to analyse the text responses and computed a linguistic distancing metric that combined several distancing measures (i.e., first‐person singular pronouns, present tense verbs, articles, discrepancy words, and words more than six letters).…”

“…The authors used Pennebaker's Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC; Pennebaker, Booth, Boyd, & Francis, ) to analyse the text responses and computed a linguistic distancing metric that combined several distancing measures (i.e., first‐person singular pronouns, present tense verbs, articles, discrepancy words, and words more than six letters). Nook et al () demonstrated that in all three distancing domains, using distanced language reduced negative affect, and that the instructed use of distanced language in one domain (e.g., physical, social, or temporal) had carryover effects in modulating language use in the other domains as well.…”

Third‐Person Self‐Talk Reduces Ebola Worry and Risk Perception by Enhancing Rational Thinking

“…“Why am I feeling this way?”), enhances people's ability to control their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under stress (e.g. Kross et al., ; Moser et al., ; Nook et al., ; Streamer et al., ) and facilitates wise, emotionally intelligent reasoning (Grossmann & Kross, ).…”

For Value or for Worth? Part 1: Speaking Syllogistic Attractors of Appropriations in a Thought-Action-Mood-Space

“…Since the above dyn4-transitions generate 56 natural language terms (Figure 3) through dichotomous expression of triple permutations of particulars, approach, and successful appropriative sublation [60], these not only "speak through syllogistic states", but also predict putative neuro-linguistic operations emerging from convergent research [61].…”