Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: Tuning to positivity

C.N. DeWall, J. M. Twenge, S.L. Koole, R.F. Baumeister, A. Marques, M.W. Reid

    Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

    Abstract

    Nine experiments tested competing hypotheses regarding nonconscious affective responses to acute social exclusion and how such responses may relate to positive mental health. The results strongly and consistently indicated that acute social exclusion increased nonconscious positive affect. Compared to nonexcluded participants, excluded participants recalled more positive memories from childhood than did accepted participants (Experiment 1), gave greater weight to positive emotion in their judgments of word similarity (Experiments 2 and 3), and completed more ambiguous word stems with happy words (Experiments 4a and 4b). This process was apparently automatic, as participants asked to imagine exclusion overestimated explicit distress and underestimated implicit positivity (Experiment 3). Four final experiments showed that this automatic emotion regulation process was found among participants low (but not high) in depressive symptoms (Experiments 5 and 6) and among participants high (but not low) in self-esteem (Experiments 7 and 8). These findings suggest that acute exclusion sets in motion an automatic emotion regulation process in which positive emotions become highly accessible, which relates to positive mental health. © 2011 American Psychological Association.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)623-635
    JournalEmotion
    Volume11
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2011

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Automatic emotion regulation after social exclusion: Tuning to positivity'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this