Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review

Amelia Aldao, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, & Susanne Schweizer (2010)

Emotion Regulation (ER) is a key component in multiple forms of psychopathology

  • Depression and anxiety (Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007; Gross & Munoz, 1995; Mennin, Holoway, Fresco, Moore, & Heimberg, 2007)

  • Eating disorders (Fairburn et al., 1995; McCarthy, 1990; Polivy & Herman, 1998, 2002)

  • alcohol abuse (Sher & Grekin, 2007; Tice, Bratslavsky, & Baumeister, 2001)

    • Using substances to down-regulate negative affect.

ER strategies

Acceptance

  • willingness to tolerate emotions as they are in the present moment

Avoidance

  • Removing oneself from the present emotion (or emotion-eliciting stimulus)

Problem-Solving

  • Conscious attempts to change a stressful situation or contain its consequences

Reappraisal

  • benign or positive interpretations or perspectives on a stressful situation as a way of reducing distress

Rumination

  • Repetitively focus on their experience of the emotion and its causes and consequences

Suppression

  • Failing to acknowledge and act upon experience of emotion.

Goals of Meta-Analysis

Results - ER Strategies and Broad Psychopathology

table 3

Moderation Analyses

  • Clinical samples showed larger effect sizes than non-clinical samples for rumination and suppression.

    • Marginal significance for avoidance and problem solving.

  • Adults had a stronger relation between psychopathology and both problem-solving and suppression compared to children/adolescents.

Results - ER Strategies across Psychopathology

table 4

Moderation Analyses

  • Adults showed larger effect sizes than children and adolescents in problem solving and depression relation, as well as suppression and depression relation.

  • Clinical samples had larger effect sizes than non-clinical samples in the relation between avoidance and depression, rumination and anxiety, rumination and depression, and suppression and eating.

  • Note that other moderation analyses were not possible due to small number of studies for certain psychopathologies.

Discussion Points

  • How do these meta-analytic results either reinforce or make you question how we talk about the relation between emotion regulation and psychopathology?
  • Focusing on Table 4, what do you make of effect size differences across methods of emotion regulation, and across pathologies?
  • What issues come up for you in terms of how we conceptualize “emotion regulation” as a construct? To what extent is it unidimensional versus multidimensional?