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Lens of Emotion : Emotion Regulation and Out-Group Attitudes

Year: 2020
Type: book
Abstract: Emotions play an important role in intergroup attitudes, and more broadly, in intergroup relations. Emotions, and intergroup emotions more specifically, arise based on an individual’s appraisal of an out-group situation, and the emotion triggers a corresponding action tendency. An especially robust source for negative intergroup emotions and negative intergroup attitudes is perceived intergroup threat. The aim of the present thesis was to assess whether a down-regulation of negative emotions after perceived intergroup threat would result in more positive attitudes toward those out-groups. In Study I, we assessed two emotion regulation scales; a scale assessing emotion dysregulation and another targeting more normative, habitual forms of emotion regulation. The latter assesses two commonly studied emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Both scales were found to be psychometrically sound and were used in all our subsequent studies. In Study II, we investigated the relationship between habitual emotion regulation and out-group attitudes. We found that habitual expressive suppression was associated with decreased acceptance toward out-groups. Cognitive reappraisal was not associated with increased acceptance, in contrast to previous literature. In Study III, we assessed whether there was a causal link between emotion regulation and out-group attitudes after exposure to threatening stimuli. The stimuli consisted in real news material depicting different kinds of intergroup threats. Participants who received no instructions to regulate their emotions when reading upsetting news articles had significantly higher levels of anger than those who cognitively reappraised their emotions. Similar results were found for disgust when comparing the reappraisal and control group, but the association was not significant. We found that both cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression increased immediate acceptance of target out-groups, compared to the control condition. It may be that merely attending and focusing on emotional reactions serves as a regulator resulting in less negative intergroup attitudes, compared to a condition where no such instructions are given. In Study IV, we assessed whether modifying emotional reactions when reminded of a real terror attack would affect attitudes toward out-groups perceived to be associated with the attack. Cognitive reappraisal significantly decreased negative emotions, and mindful attention increased them. We also found that adverse emotions directly negatively predicted the attitudes toward attack-associated groups, but not toward other groups. The reappraisal and mindful attention conditions affected the out-group attitudes via negative emotions. The out-group attitudes were not directly affected by the experimental condition. Additionally, posttraumatic stress symptoms correlated significantly with the degree of negative emotions both before and after the threatening stimuli reminding of the terror attack. The posttraumatic stress symptoms also correlated negatively with the acceptance of attack-associated groups, but not other groups. The results from studies III and IV indicate that the delay between intergroup threat, the emotion regulation intervention and the attitudinal outcome may play a role, as well as the type of threat. The results of the present studies can be applied both in preventive and clinical measures. For example, they can be of interest together with other interventions for programs aiming at improving intergroup attitudes or preventing negative intergroup attitudes. Such initiatives may be of interest for example for actors working in multicultural settings, in schools and correctional facilities for individuals who have previously engaged in intergroup hostilities.
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3039852751
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