Item Details

abstract

Both experiencing incidental positive emotion and using reappraisal strategies can help people regulate their emotions when coping with stress. Studies exploring individual differences have found strong associations between positive emotion and cognitive reappraisal success. However, the causal direction between positive emotion and reappraisal remains unclear. We hypothesized that incidental positive emotion might facilitate cognitive reappraisal through multiple mechanisms, such as cognitive facilitation, adaptive meaning-making, and motivational mechanisms. To test the possible facilitating effects of positive emotion on reappraisal, we applied virtual reality (VR) to elicit positive or neutral emotional contexts, used a speech task to induce stress, and instructed participants to reappraise the stressor positively. Participants reported their emotions and thoughts throughout the experiment. Although being in an incidental positive context helped to increase individuals’ positive emotions, results of the present study failed to support the facilitation effects of incidental positive emotion on cognitive reappraisal, and possible explanations are provided in the discussion. However, we found that being in an incidental positive context facilitated the relations between the increase of positive thoughts and increase of positive emotions, and future investigation should explore the possible role of individual differences in the facilitation effect of incidental positive emotion on relations between emotions and thoughts.

subject

Cognitive Reappraisal

Facilitation Effect

Positive Emotion

VR

contributor

Song, Yu (author)

Waugh, Christian E. (committee chair)

Pratt, Wayne E. (committee member)

Jayawickreme, D. Eranda (committee member)

Weiner, Jeffrey L. (committee member)

date

2018-05-24T08:36:19Z (accessioned)

2019-05-23T08:30:13Z (available)

2018 (issued)

degree

Psychology (discipline)

embargo

2019-05-23 (terms)

identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/90761 (uri)

language

en (iso)

publisher

Wake Forest University

title

THE EFFECTS OF POSITIVE EMOTION ON COGNITIVE REAPPRAISAL

type

Thesis