The Moderating Effect Of Language Labels On Negative And Complex Emotional Experiences

As a concomitant emotion regulation without regulating consciousness,language labeling plays an important role in various psychotherapy.At present,there are still many controversial conclusions about affect labeling,such as whether non affect labeling and affect labeling can reduce the level of negative emotional experience;whether subjective affect labeling and objective affect labeling can reduce the level of negative emotional experience.At the same time,as a way of emotion regulation,affect labeling has only been concerned for more than ten years.It lacks local data support and its role from multiple perspectives.This study explores the moderating effect of affect labeling on negative emotions from the perspectives of non affect labeling,subjective affect labeling and objective affect labeling,and further explores the moderating effect of objective affect labeling on negative and complex emotions from the perspective of Chinese culture combined with traditional emotional regulation and emotional complexity in complex emotional situations.There are four parts in this study.In the first study,the laboratory research method and classical verbal labeling paradigm was used to explore the effects of non affect labeling and affect labeling on negative emotion and the differences between them.In the second study,we used the laboratory research method to explore the regulatory effect of subjective affect labeling and objective affect labeling on negative emotions and the differences between the two dimensions.Experiment 2a is to explore the effect of subjective affect labeling on emotion regulation under three emotion intensities;experiment 2b is to explore the effect of objective affect labeling on emotion regulation under three emotion intensities.In order to further explore the specific situation of objective affect labeling,study 3 and study 4 explored the regulatory effect of objective affect labeling on emotion from the perspective of culture and emotional complexity respectively.In Study 3,a modified emotion regulation paradigm was used to explore the effect of objective affect labeling combined with "cognitive change" on the regulation of negative emotions.In the fourth study,we used the methods of laboratory research and questionnaire to explore whether objective affect labeling can regulate emotion in complex emotional situations,and further explore whether objective affect labeling ability can predict alexithymia.The results showed that:(1)The reaction time of affect matching was the largest,followed by gender matching,affect labeling and gender labeling.The accuracy of affect labeling is higher than that of emotion matching;the accuracy of gender labeling is higher than that of gender matching,and the accuracy of affect labeling is the highest,followed by affect matching,gender labeling and gender matching,so the difficulty of affect matching is the biggest,followed by gender matching,followed by affect labeling and gender labeling.(2)In the high arousal emotional intensity,the score of emotional experience in subjective affect labeling task was lower than that in viewing task,but there was no significant difference in other emotional intensity.At any emotional intensity,there was no significant difference in the score of emotional experience between the objective affect labeling task and the viewing task.Under the label task,the score of emotional experience under the subjective affect labeling type was lower than that under the objective affect labeling type,indicating that the effect of subjective affect labeling on reducing negative emotion was more significant than that of objective affect labeling.(3)In the high arousal emotional intensity,the score of emotional experience of "fortune and misfortune depend on each other " cognitive change type was significantly lower than that of "spend money to avoid disaster" cognitive change type;in the neutral emotional intensity,there was no significant difference between the two cognitive change types.Under the condition of high arousal negative emotion intensity,the score of emotional experience of "fortune and misfortune depend on each other" cognitive change type was significantly lower than that of viewing task,while the score of emotional experience of "spend money to avoid disaster" cognitive change type was not significantly different from that of viewing task;under the condition of neutral arousal emotional intensity,the scores of two cognitive change type was significantly higher than that of viewing task.(4)There was no significant difference in the scores of viewing task and labeling task among positive biased alexithymia group,positive biased non alexithymia group,positive biased alexithymia group and positive biased non alexithymia group.There was no significant difference in gender,total labeling score,positive and negative bias.To sum up,we draw the following conclusions: affect labeling and non affect labeling can reduce the level of negative emotion experience,and affect labeling can better reduce the level of negative emotion experience than non affect labeling.Subjective affect labeling can reduce the emotional experience of high arousal negative emotions,while objective affect labeling have no regulatory effect on negative emotions.The objective affect labeling based on the cognitive change type of "fortune and misfortune depend on each other" can reduce the negative emotion experience of high arousal degree,while the objective affect labeling based on the cognitive change type of "spend money to avoid disaster" has no obvious effect on the negative emotion of high arousal degree.At the same time,the objective affect labeling based on cognitive change can improve the emotional experience of neutral emotion It has a regulatory role.In the context of complex emotions,objective affect labeling has no significant effect on complex emotions,and gender,positive and negative bias and total score of labeling can not predict alexithymia.The results of this study provide some local data support for the study of affect labeling,and add a new research perspective from the perspective of Chinese culture and emotional complexity,and provide theoretical basis and data support for the psychotherapy of affect labeling.It is helpful to enhance people's ability of emotional expression and emotional regulation,so as to improve the level of mental health and the ability to resist pressure.