Picture Gigi, chatting with her boss, when the meeting takes a sharp turn. Gigi’s boss tells her that she has been lacking work lately and that she may have to stay late a few evenings to make it up. Surprised by his boss’s comment, he felt a roar of anxiety rise in his mind and body. Psychological research suggests that Gigi feels anxious because she interprets her boss’s comments as some kind of threat that she probably can’t handle.
Just as Gigi begins frantically searching online for a new job, she spies the “Employee of the Month” plaque on her desk from last year. He thinks to himself that he might be able to return to his old form. He changed his initial view of the situation (need to escape a threat) to a new one (let’s rise to the challenge), thereby reducing his anxiety. Psychologists call this process reappraisal.
Studies show that Reassessing sensitive situations A powerful way to change how you feel. When you find the silver lining in a bad situation or give others and yourself the benefit of the doubt, it can help you feel better.
I am a psychology researcher who is interested How people change their emotions. Gigi may be feeling a little less anxious at this point, but does she really believe she can make it in time and return to her former glory? My colleagues and I set out to investigate whether it would be possible to start the re-evaluation process without going through with it completely. Are people getting the full benefit by trying to think differently about their emotions?
There are several stages of revaluation
When my colleague Kate McRae And I first started thinking about what it means to reevaluate emotional experience, something that we’ve seen in emotion regulation research. Almost all studies have treated reappraisal as a one-step process. The researchers would ask participants to “reappraise it to make themselves feel better” and then measure the effects.
however, Theories about how people regulate their emotions propose that, like any effortful psychological process, reappraisal involves multiple steps.
When you want to change how you feel, you first create a reappraisal. You turn and expand your mind to come up with some alternative ways of looking at the situation. For Gigi, seeing the Employee of the Month plaque helped. He could also think about previous praise from his boss or how it felt to complete projects quickly.
After you create a reassessment, it may seem like you’re done, but you’re not. That alternative explanation is fragile and must compete with your original acceptance of what is driving your emotions. Somehow you have to reinforce that reappraisal so it can stick.
We call this realization – when you focus on that reappraisal and change your mind about the situation in detail. As for Gigi, she can continue to think about all the ways she can be a great employee so that it sticks in her mind and her anxiety really disappears.
We tested this idea in a study. We showed 89 undergraduate participants images of negative situations and asked them to first simply reappraise the image in ways that might help them feel better about it. For example, they may see a picture of a frail man in a hospital bed and tell themselves that the man is receiving good treatment and will get better soon. Then, we showed them the picture again and asked them to focus and elaborate in their minds on the reappraisal.
Participants felt a little better after generating a reappraisal, but they Felt much better after implementing it By fleshing out the focus and detail. In a follow-up study, we showed that This mental growth continues Time to watch the pictures later.
Choosing to commit to feeling better
We therefore demonstrated experimentally that people reassess their feelings in two steps. So what? That’s probably what everyone does naturally, anyway, right?
This was the next question we wanted answered. We conducted a study with 52 undergraduate participants similar to the previous one, but with a twist. This time, after participants made a reappraisal, we gave them a choice to continue implementing the reappraisal process or to distract themselves and stop the process.
Participants chose to continue to reassess their emotions Only half time. Although reappraisal made participants feel better about the sensory images, there were times when they stopped the process prematurely and did not enjoy its full benefits.
in real life
These studies showing the benefits of following through on emotional reappraisal are lab experiments, but they have implications for how you try to help yourself feel better in real life.
First, it’s hard to intentionally change how you think about something, and people tend to Aversion to hard work. Indeed, our choice is study, people Chose to forego re-evaluation When they were not feeling its benefits early on. Knowing this human tendency can give you the best chance to keep reassessing even when it doesn’t seem like it’s working or difficult.
Second, people often get reevaluations from others and it’s tempting to think that hearing a new perspective is all you need. In fact, we have unpublished data showing that participants feel significantly better when they receive a reassessment of their own situation from someone else. But other people can’t change your mind for you. If you really want to feel good, you must do this.
The next time you find yourself in an unpleasant situation like Gigi’s, don’t just cursorily think you can rise to the challenge. Really think through the situation and let your new perspective become yours alone.
Christian WProfessor of Psychology, Wake Forest University
Reprinted from this article the conversation Under Creative Commons license. read on Main article.
