Perceived vs. Actual Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Individuals With and Without a History of NSSI

Abstract

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has consistently been associated with self-reported difficulties in emotion reactivity and the regulation of negative emotions; however, less is known about the accuracy of these self-reports or the reactivity and regulation of positive emotions. The present study sought to investigate differences between women with and without a history of NSSI on: (a) self-reported general tendencies of negative and positive emotion reactivity, (b) self-reported general tendencies of negative and positive emotion regulation, and (c) emotion regulation reported in response to a positive and negative mood induction. The sample consisted of 36 women with a recent history of NSSI within the last 2 years (Mage = 20.06; SD = 1.51) and a comparison group with no history of NSSI (n = 34; Mage = 20.15; SD = 1.54). Participants completed self-report measures of negative and positive emotion reactivity and regulation. In a separate session, participants underwent both a negative and positive mood induction using a counterbalanced design and reported their experienced emotions. Results from two-way MANOVAs and ANOVAs revealed those with a history of NSSI reported significantly greater difficulties in negative emotion reactivity and regulation than the no-NSSI comparison group; however, no group differences emerged in self-reported reactivity or regulation of positive emotions. In contrast, repeated measures ANOVAs on data from the mood induction task found no group differences in reactivity or regulation for either negative or positive emotions. These findings highlight the possibility that although individuals with a history of NSSI evaluate their ability to manage negative emotions as significantly worse than individuals with no history of self-injury, this may not reflect their actual emotion regulatory processes.

Emotion in non-suicidal self-injury: A contradiction between global self-reports and real-time responses

“…In terms of recovery from negative mood, counter to our predictions we found no evidence that young adults with a recent history of NSSI recovered less effectively from emotional challenge compared to controls. In a similar manner, young adults who had engaged in NSSI in the past two years and those without a history of NSSI showed similar subjective recovery from a sad film clip (Mettler et al, 2021). In contrast to both Study 2 and…”

“…Two studies have found that, compared to people with no history of self-injury, people who selfinjure experienced greater negative mood reactivity to conflict discussions (Kaufman et al, 2019), and, for people with both NSSI and BPD, imagined social rejection (Gratz et al, 2019). In contrast, other studies have found no difference in how people with and without a history of self-injury subjectively respond to anger inductions (Weinberg & Klonsky, 2012), sad film clips (Davis et al, 2014;Mettler et al, 2021), acute social stress (Kaess et al, 2012), personally-relevent social distress or criticism scripts (Allen et al, 2019;Gratz et al, , 2019, or social exclusion paradigms (Groschwitz et al, 2016;Schatten et al, 2015). Still other studies have reported that, compared to people with no history of self-injury, people who self-injure show reduced subjective reactivity when writing about a personal failure (Bresin & Gordon, 2013) or watching a sad film clip (Boyes et al, 2020).…”

“…Second, even within the studies that focused on NSSI, there is considerable variability in how eligibility was determined. 15 Two-thirds (64.3%, k = 9) of NSSI-specific studies recruited participants to the NSSI group on the basis of a lifetime history of NSSI (e.g., Allen et al, 2019;Bresin & Gordon, 2013;Glenn et al, 2011;Nock & Mendes, 2008), whereas others determined eligibility based on the number of lifetime instances of the behaviour (Ziebell et al, 2020), and still others based on the number of instances within a certain time period (e.g., Groschwitz et al, 2016;Mettler et al, 2021). Given the variability in NSSI engagement (e.g., Whitlock et al, 2011;Wilkinson et al, 2018), determining eligibility on the basis of a lifetime history of NSSI means that it is likely that many participants in the NSSI group no longer self-injure.…”

“…Future researchers should more directly investigate if the intensity of emotional challenge influences the relationship between global emotional dysregulation and real-time subjective reactivity by exposing participants to a series of different emotional challenges. This data is already available from studies which have assessed both global self-reports and real-time emotional challenge (e.g., Boyes et al, 2020;Glenn et al, 2011;Kaufman et al, 2019;Mettler et al, 2021), and so secondary analyses of existing data may be a valuable next step.…”

“…Theoretical models arguing that altered emotional responding (in part) creates the context for NSSI have tended to focus on emotional responding to negatively valanced stimuli, and have largely failed to consider reactivity to positively valenced stimuli (Chapman et al, 2006;Nock, 2009, although see Hasking et al, 2016. Recently there have been calls to investigate how people who engage in NSSI respond to positively valenced emotion manipulations (Boyes et al, 2020;Mettler et al, 2021;Perini et al, 2021). In particular, some researchers have suggested that NSSI may be characterised by a blunted emotional response to positive stimuli (Boyes et al, 2020), whereas others have proposed that NSSI may be characterised by an amplified emotional response to positive stimuli (Perini et al, 2021).…”