Assessing emotional reactivity and its association with emotion regulation. Dr Rodrigo Becerra,. David Preece. Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia ...
Assessing emotional reactivity and its association with emotion regulation. Dr Rodrigo Becerra, David Preece Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, Australia
Studying emotions at ECU, Clinical Psychology program
Alexithymia Emotion Regulation Emotion Coherence Emotion Reactivity Emotion reac./reg. and psychophysiology Therapy for Em.react. and Em. Reg.
In Community and psychiatric samples.
Why study Emotional reactivity:
The distinction between primary and secondary emotions.
Connection between emotional reactivity and emotion regulation
The need to distinguish between positive and negative emotions
Useful venue to explore the many unsolved issues in the emotions area
According to Gross the key players in emotion regulation:
Emotion generation Emotion regulation
?
- Identification of the need to regulate em. - Selection among available regulation option - Implementation of regulatory tactics - Monitoring of implementation
Emotional reactivity
Problematic levels of emotional reactivity in:
Depression (Bylsma, Morris, & Rottenberg,
Bipolar disorder (Gruber, Harvey, & Purcell,
Anxiety disorders (Goldin et al., 2009),
Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
2008) 2011)
substance misuse (Kornreich et al., 1998).
(Kuo & Linelan, 2009).
ER in psychopathology has been found to be dependent not so much on the gravity of life events, but rather on the person’s sensitivity to minor life events
Malla, Cortese, Shaw, & Ginsberg , 1998; Myin‐Germeys, et al, 2003
Impulsivity
Emotional responding
Emotional reactivity
Emotional vulnerability
Urgency (positive and negative)
Emotional Reactivity Davidson (1998; 2015) emotional responses characterised by: (1)
How fast an emotional response is activated
(2)
The intensity of an emotional response
(3)
The duration of an emotional response
6
5
4
Intensity
Stimulus 3
2
Emotional response time
1
Duration of emotional response
0 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
Example Biosocial model of BPD: Normal ER ----Normal ER 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Category 1
Example Biosocial model of BPD: BPD ER Duration 9
8 7 6
Intensity 5 4 3 2 1 0
Activation
Self report measures of EmReact.
The Behavioral Inhibition/Behavioral Activation scale (Carver & White, 1994)
The Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire (Capaldi & Rotherbart, 1992)
The Affect Intensity Measure (Larsen & Diener, 1987)
The Emotion Vulnerability-Child Scale (Sauer & Baer, 2009)
The Emotion Intensity Scale (Bachorowski & Braaten, 1994)
The Emotional Reactivity Scale (ERS; Nock et al., 2008).
Emotional Reactivity Scale (ERS: Nock et al., 2008) 21-Item Self-report Activation, intensity, and duration Eleven items do not specify the valence of the emotion in the item (e.g., ‘I tend to get very emotional very easily’ or ‘my emotions go from neutral to extreme in an instant’) The remainder refer only to negative emotions (e.g., ‘my feelings get hurt easily’).
It’s up to the respondent to guess what type of emotion the question is referring to, or to try to report an aggregate across their experience of many different emotions.
As a number of the ERS questions refer specifically to negative emotions, it seems likely in our view, that respondents would be skewed toward interpreting the nonvalenced items mainly in terms of negative emotions.
Hence, we expect that the ERS represents a measure of mainly negative reactivity,
Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS) (Becerra & Campitelli, 2013)
Research suggests that people’s typical experience of emotions can differ substantially based on whether the stimuli is positively or negatively valenced (Barrett et al., 2001; Davidson, 2015).
E.g., Bipolar Disorder, BPD
PERS
30 Items
Activation, intensity and duration.
For both positive and negative emotions
Five-point scale indicating how true that statement is of them on a typical day
PERS POSITIVE-ACTIVATION POSITIVE-INTENSITY POSITIVE-DURATION
NEGATIVE-ACTIVATION NEGATIVE-INTENSITY NEGATIVE-DURATION
Subscales of the same valence were also intended to be combined into a
GENERAL POSITIVE REACTIVITY GENERAL NEGATIVE REACTIVITY
Becerra, R., Preece, D., Campitelli, G., & Scott-Pillow, G. (2017). The Assessment of Emotional Reactivity Across Negative and Positive Emotions: Development and Validation of the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS). Assessment, 1073191117694455.
Factor Structure
Concurrent Validity
Internal Reliability
Analyses Descriptive stats: A series of one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) to explore the influence of gender and age on PERS scores
Factorial Validity: A series of CFAs A second-order EFA
Factor Structure
PERS General Positive- Positive- Positive- General Negative- Negative- Negativ epositive activation intensity duratio negative activation intensity n duration reactivity reactivity
ERS .141
.150
.015
.266** .771**
Total scale
.067
.016
.066
.139
Nonacceptance
.028
.059
.037
Goals
.071
.039
Impulse
.232
Awareness
.756**
.694**
.647**
.503**
.460**
.564**
.387**
.102
.262*
.234
.371**
.129
.101
.037
.417**
.382**
.428**
.364**
.266*
.189
.171
.406**
.377**
.457**
.307*
.237
.154
.223
.263*
.066
.107
.044
.037
Strategies
.075
.055
.044
.114
.626**
.510**
.646**
.601**
Clarity
.114
.013
.158
.151
.050
.079
.122
.064
Total scale
DERS
Limitations
Sample size Sample characteristics No psychiatric sample No Test –retest reliability No adolescent sample Limited concurrent validity Only Trait Emotional Reactivity
Assessing emotional reactivity: Psychometric properties of the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS) and the development of a short version (PERS-S) Preece, Becerra, & Campitelli (Re-submitted: Journal of personality Assessment)
N= 428 Psychometric properties of the full PERS
Short version =18-item version (3 Items per subscale- selected on their psychometric performance plus content validity) Both PERS and PERS S had theoretically congruent factor structure and sound levels of internal reliability
PERS/PERS-S
General negative reactivity
Negativeactivation
Negativeintensity
Negativeduration
Cognitive reappraisal
-.299**/ -.300**
-.296**/ -.300**
-.228**/ -.232**
-.300**/ -.276**
Expressive suppression
.127**/ .111*
.122*/ .088
.045/ .039
.178**/ .168**
.709**/ .697**
.635**/ .604**
.625**/ .607**
.700**/ .663**
ERQ
DERS Total scale
PERS/PERS-S
+ General positive reactivity
Positiveactivation
Positiveintensity
Positiveduration
Cognitive reappraisal
.432**/ .448**
.404**/ .421**
.265**/ .373**
.437**/ .419**
Expressive suppression
-.251**/ -.273**
-.246**/ -.255**
-.173**/ -.240**
-.225**/ -.244**
-.315**/ -.432**
-.288**/ -.371**
-.002/ -.267**
-.484**/ -.524**
ERQ
DERS Total scale
Implications
Going back to emotion generation/activation/impulsivity, etc. This would involve psychoeducation including emotion awareness. Many Emotion Reg programs include emotion awareness. Perhaps added emphasis on first reaction Good for depersonalisation (ego dystonic?) Coherence between subjective and physiological responses becomes important.
Current projects in this area A dual process model of emotion coherence, do the data fit? Popovic, Becerra, Gringar, Barnes
Exploring the Relationship Between Emotional Reactivity and Emotion Regulation Kapi, Becerra, & Preece,
Assessing emotional reactivity: Examining the psychometric properties of the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale – Short version (PERS-S) McNab, Becerra, & Preece
Emotion regulation, reactivity and Mindfulness Trainor & Becerra
Alexithymia and emotion regulation Preece, Becerra, Robinson, Dandy
Resources
Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS): Copy of questionnaire and scoring instructions via ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/314157839_Perth_Emotional_Reactivity _Scale_PERS_Copy_of_questionnaire_and_scoring_instructions
Becerra, R., Preece, D., Campitelli, G., & Scott-Pillow, G. (2017). The Assessment of Emotional Reactivity Across Negative and Positive Emotions: Development and Validation of the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS). Assessment,
Preece, Becerra, & Campitelli (submitted) Assessing emotional reactivity: Psychometric properties of the Perth Emotional Reactivity Scale (PERS) and the development of a short version (PERS-S).
