The Regulation Effect Of Unconscious Emotion Regulation During A Frustrating Situation

Most research in the field of emotion regulation focus on conscious emotion regulation. However, emotion regulation in our life often occurs at an unconscious level. Unlike conscious emotion regulation, unconscious emotion regulation cost less attention and cognitive effort. Thus, it has more advantage than conscious emotion regulation. At present, unconscious emotion regulation has become a hot spot in the field of emotion regulation. However, the regulation effect of unconscious emotion regulation at the level of behavior and physiology is still not clear. In the present study, a frustrating arithmetic task was used to induce negative emotion. Emotional experiences were assessed by the positive affect and negative affect scale (PANAS) while emotion-related physiological activation was assessed by the heart-rate reactivity This research adopted the biofeedback technology to exam the regulation effect of two different unconscious emotion regulation strategies at behavior and physiological level.The research includes two experiments. Experiment one examined the regulation effect of unconscious reappraisal strategy in a frustrating task. Negative emotion was induced by the high ecologically valid frustrating task. Subjects randomly assigned to the unconscious reappraisal, conscious reappraisal and the control conditions. The experiment was divided into three phases:baseline phase, frustration induced phase and recovery phase. Subjective emotional experience and heart rate were record in each phase. The result show participants primed with unconscious reappraisal achieved the same decrease in heart-rate reactivity as those explicitly instructed to reappraise. In addition, unconscious reappraisal group did not display reductions in subjective negative emotion which, however, was significantly decreased in the conscious reappraisal group. Heart-rate reactivity was positively correlated with negative emotion ratings and was negatively correlated with the positive emotion ratings.Experiment two examined the regulation effect of unconscious acceptance strategy in a frustrating task. Negative emotion was still induced by the high ecologically valid frustrating task in the experiment. Subjects were randomly assigned to the control group, the conscious acceptance group and the unconscious acceptance group. The experiment was divided into three phases:baseline phase, frustration induced phase and recovery phase. Subjective emotional experience and heart rate were record in each phase. The result show that the unconscious acceptance group and the conscious acceptance group had significant difference in the subjective emotional experience. In the task phase, the conscious acceptance group decreased more than the unconscious acceptance group in positive emotion rating. In addition, the conscious acceptance group and the unconscious acceptance group significantly reduce the heart rate compared with the control group, but they had no significant difference with each other. Heart-rate reactivity was positively correlated with negative emotion ratings and was negatively correlated with the positive emotion ratings. Thus, during frustration unconscious acceptance strategy could not only effectively reduce the physical activity levels associated with emotion, but also has better regulation effect than conscious acceptance in subjective emotional experience.