Attivazione e regolazione emozionale: un confronto tra strategie

This study investigated emotion regulation, with the specific aim of assessing the effectiveness of three different emotional strategies (reappraisal, distraction and suppression) in modifying the intensity of perceived emotions. To this end, 80 non-clinical subjects, 40 males and 40 females, aged 20-30 years (M = 24.51 years; SD = 2.714), were randomly assigned to four groups, one for each of the three strategies under study plus a control group. Participants were shown six clips eliciting anger, sadness, disgust, fear, tenderness or amusement, self-rating their level of emotional arousal on the PANAS scale for each clip. Distraction was found to be the most effective emotion regulation strategy; compared to the control group, subjects that used distraction obtained significantly different scores on the positive affect scale in relation to the clips eliciting anger and disgust, and on the negative affect scale in relation to the clip eliciting disgust. Reappraisal and suppression did not significantly alter emotional experience