Emotion Naming Impedes Both Cognitive Reappraisal and Mindful Acceptance Strategies of Emotion Regulation

Abstract

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 (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 feeling worse 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.

Study protocol: Social Health Impact of Network Effects (SHINE) Study

“…Studies that examine mindful attention as an emotion regulation strategy have shown that it can reduce negative affect (Nook et al, 2021;Westbrook et al, 2013), pain (Kober et al, 2019), and nicotine cravings (Westbrook et al, 2013). These studies also indicate that mindful attention is an effective emotion regulation strategy for individuals who do not practice meditation (Kober et al, 2019;Nook et al, 2021;Westbrook et al, 2013), highlighting its potential utility as an intervention target in everyday life. In the context of substance use, both trait mindfulness (Karyadi et al, 2014) and mindfulness training (Brewer et al, 2012;Tapper, 2018;Westbrook et al, 2013) have been associated with decreased cravings for food, alcohol, and smoking, and various mindfulness-based interventions have been developed to reduce substance use (Chiesa & Serretti, 2014;Goldberg et al, 2022;Li et al, 2017).…”

“…Mindful attention is thought to facilitate psychological distancing through "defusion" or "decentering" from one's emotional experience (Kang et al, 2013). Studies that examine mindful attention as an emotion regulation strategy have shown that it can reduce negative affect (Nook et al, 2021;Westbrook et al, 2013), pain (Kober et al, 2019), and nicotine cravings (Westbrook et al, 2013). These studies also indicate that mindful attention is an effective emotion regulation strategy for individuals who do not practice meditation (Kober et al, 2019;Nook et al, 2021;Westbrook et al, 2013), highlighting its potential utility as an intervention target in everyday life.…”

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

“…These lines of data suggest that applying specific emotion language should facilitate later regulation. However, tight empirical investigations have actually found the opposite: Labeling emotions makes subsequent regulation less effective (Nook et al, 2021b), and labeling emotions using many emotion words leads people to select more maladaptive regulatory strategies than if they had used just a few emotion words (Vine et al, 2019). There are certainly ways to iron out the logic to make these findings fit (e.g., perhaps precise labeling boosts regulation at longer time horizons than these experiments tested?…”

“…Conversely, emotion differentiation might actually explain why vocabulary is associated with mental health (i.e., people with larger vocabularies can use more specific terms to label their emotions, boosting regulation and ultimately mental health). This distinction becomes especially interesting in a developmental context, where language may contribute to growths in emotion conceptualization (Nook et al, 2017;Hoemann et al, 2019Hoemann et al, , 2020bNook and Somerville, 2019). Similarly, as hinted above, mean negative affect may confound the relationship between differentiation and health, or it may mediate this relationship.…”

“…To date, however, very few studies have examined emotion differentiation in developmental samples, constraining our knowledge of this phenomenon almost entirely to adult populations. This is a major gap in understanding, especially considering that childhood and adolescence are active windows of change in several social and emotional processes (Guyer et al, 2016;Somerville and McLaughlin, 2018;Nook and Somerville, 2019). Across childhood, people gradually learn how to define emotion words, to accurately label emotional facial expressions, to predict specific emotional responses from contextual settings, and to manage their emotional responses (Baron- Cohen et al, 2010;Widen, 2013;Silvers et al, 2017;Lagattuta and Kramer, 2019;Nook et al, 2020).…”