Research On The Mechanism Of Emotion Regulation In Individual With Different Empathy Ability

Purpose:It studies emotional recovery effect of the high empathy group and the low empathy group starting in the positive emotions or negative emotions after using the emotional regulation strategies of distraction and cognitive reappraisal.Methods:1) I investigate150persons and distinguish the groups of high empathy and low empathy with empathy scale IRI.2) Take two movie clips as the emotional starters of the two groups.3) Use instructions to guide participants to regulate their emotions and adopt the combination method of self-report and the physiological arousal to study the difference between the two groups who are40participants of high empathy and40participants of low empathy in the three phases of baseline, affective priming, and emotional recovery.Results:1) On the assessment of empathy questionnaires, male subjects and female subjects have significant difference in scores that is the male’s scores is lower than the female’s scores.2) There was no difference in the assessment of positive emotions and negative emotions for high and low empathy groups in the baseline phase.3) Affective priming experiments show that the subjective assessment value of the high empathy group are higher than that of the low empathy group. Judging from the physiological indicators, I find it easier to wake up the high empathy group than the low empathy group. The high empathy group increased more positive emotions after a positive start and more negative emotions after a negative start than the low empathy group.4) Considering from the scores of the subjective assessment, the high empathy group starting in the positive emotions had significant increase in positive emotion and decrease in negative emotion after using the distraction strategy. Starting in the negative emotion, negative emotion of the high empathy was significantly reduced after using cognitive reappraisal strategy, while that of low empathy group was significantly reduced after using distraction strategy. Considering from physiological indicators, subjects of the two groups of low and high empathy starting in positive emotion had significant change after using distraction strategy. The high empathy group starting in negative emotion had significant change after using the strategies of cognitive reappraisal. Considering from physiological indicators, subjects of high empathy starting in negative emotion had significant change after using distraction strategy and cognitive reappraisal. subjects of low empathy starting in negative emotion had significant change after using distraction strategyConclusion:Gender differences will cause empathy ability differences. Women’s empathy ability is higher than men’s. The high empathy group is more susceptible than the low empathy group. At start-up phase, the effect of high empathy group is better than the low empathy group. The high empathy group’s emotional recovery is better than the low empathy group’s. Distraction adjustment strategy is better than cognitive reappraisal.