La funzione dell'ottimismo nel processo di regolazione delle emozioni

Emotion regulation represents a fundamental aspect for adaptation, due to its social functioning and its subjective wellbeing. In the present research relation between emotion regulation and optimism were studied. Dispositional optimism is considered as a perspective on future life events, in which optimists tend to have positive expectations for the future. Moreover this relation rebounds are evaluated referring to psychological wellbeing, defined by the way people perceive, interpret and evaluate the world and their experiences. Finally, since there are not studies in which habitual emotion regulation strategies and situational ones are compared, in the present research they are compared through non verbal behaviours during an emotion elicitation experience. Through the three studies the main aim is to deepen different aspects of these dynamics. In particular, study 1 intends to verify if dispositional optimism really plays an important role during the emotion regulation process. Results show some interesting data: there are a lot of correlation between variables, coherently with hypothesis, especially between dispositional optimism and emotional regulation strategies. Nevertheless to verify the mediation role of emotion regulation it is necessary to work out new and more complex models, because the ones elaborated showed weak data. The main aim in Study 2 is to analyze non verbal behaviour during a negative emotion elicitation in a sample of 42 students, balanced with regard to optimistic disposition. The objective is to describe behaviour differences to compare habitual emotional regulation strategies and situational ones, measured by ERQ. Qualitative and quantitative results allow to partially verify every hypothesis. Emotion regulation was moreover compared by different kind of collected data. The main aim of Study 3 is to verify if it is possible to influence emotion regulation process by using a treatment. In particular, the emotional written disclosure paradigm by Pennebaker was used. Although results don’t show a lot of significant data, it is possible to observe how emotional disclosure could influence adopted variables. In particular a lot of differences emerged, in particular between optimism and other variables more impressionable by Pennebaker’s method. Finally, the present research, through three studies tried to highlight some characteristics of dispositional optimism, emotion regulation and psychological wellbeing, from different points of view: theoretical, linked to non verbal behaviour and to the use of a specific treatment. Some important indications about future developments were collected from results and limits of the present work: in particular, next research could compare positive and negative emotions together; could find a tool able to measure emotion regulation situational strategies, finally could study emotion regulation also in an interactive situation, to compare intentional nonverbal behaviour.