Associating Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression With Psychopathological Symptoms

Abstract

Background: Stressful situations and psychopathology symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety) shape how individuals regulate and respond to others’ emotions. However, how emotional expressions influence mental health and impact intrapersonal and interpersonal experiences is still unclear.Objective: Here, we used the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE) scale to explore the relationship between emotional expression abilities with affective symptoms and mental health markers.Methods: From a sample of 351 participants, we firstly validate a German version of the FREE scale on a final sample of 222 participants located in Germany, recruited through an online platform. Following this, we performed confirmatory factor analyses to assess the model structure of the FREE-scale. We then utilize a LASSO regression to determine which indicators of psychopathology symptoms and mental health are related to emotional expressive regulation and determine their particular interactions through the general linear model.Results: We replicated the FREE scale’s four latent factors (i.e., ability to enhance and suppress positive as well as negative emotional expressions). After the selection of relevant instruments through LASSO regression, the suppress ability showed specific negative associations with depression (r = 0.2) and stress symptoms (r = 0.16) and positive associations with readiness to confront distressing situations (r = 0.25), self-support (r = 0.2), and tolerance of emotions (r = 0.2). Both, emotional expressions enhance and suppress abilities positively associated with coping markers (resilience) and emotion regulation skills. Finally, the interaction effects between emotional flexibility abilities and stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms evidenced that consistent with the flexibility theory, enhancing and suppressing abilities may predict psychopathological symptoms.Conclusions: These findings emphasize the importance of considering the flexibility to express emotions as a relevant factor for preserved mental health or the development of psychopathological symptoms and indicate that online surveys may serve as a reliable indicator of mental health.

The role of emotion regulation for general self-efficacy in adolescents assessed through both neurophysiological and self-reported measures

“…23,43,44,67 This is arguably a far too static view on ER, and the more recent view is that expressive suppression increases resilience if applied flexibly and appropriately. [68][69][70] For instance, a recent study found that both the flexible suppression and enhancement of emotion expression was positively associated with general selfefficacy beliefs. 70 Because expressive suppression is also associated with psychopathology, which is negatively associated with SE, the flexibility to which individuals apply expressive suppression may have been a bidirectional confounder in the relationship between expressive suppression and SE in our results.…”

“…[68][69][70] For instance, a recent study found that both the flexible suppression and enhancement of emotion expression was positively associated with general selfefficacy beliefs. 70 Because expressive suppression is also associated with psychopathology, which is negatively associated with SE, the flexibility to which individuals apply expressive suppression may have been a bidirectional confounder in the relationship between expressive suppression and SE in our results. Nevertheless, expressive suppression was excluded from subsequent analyses.…”

Mitochondrial Impairment: A Common Motif in Neuropsychiatric Presentation? The Link to the Tryptophan–Kynurenine Metabolic System

“…The potential of a novel approach, the time–frequency decomposition of heart rate variability, has gained attention in the evaluation of the abnormal fear learning that characterizes several neurological and psychiatric disoders [ 112 ]. Moreover, several studies have suggested the effectiveness of non-invasive brain simulation to interfere and modulate the abnormal activity of neural circuits, such as amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus, involved in the acquisition and consolidation of emotional memories, which are altered in psychiatric disorders, such as fear-related disorder including anxiety disorder, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or depression [ 113 , 114 , 115 , 116 ] ( Table 1 ).…”

Outlining a novel psychometric model of mental flexibility and affect dynamics

“…The Psychological Flexibility component includes a sub-process called Emotional Regulation Flexibility (ERF) ( Aldao et al, 2015 ; Burton and Bonanno, 2016 ; Quattropani et al, 2022 ). Emotion Regulation Flexibility refers to the ability to implement and switch between emotion regulation strategies that are synchronized with contextual demands ( Aldao et al, 2015 ; Goubet and Chrysikou, 2019 ; Cobos-Sánchez et al, 2020 ; English and Eldesouky, 2020 ; Gonzalez-Escamilla et al, 2022 ).…”