Implementation Intentions and The Strategic Automation of Emotion Regulation
In 2009 Schweiger Gallo, Keil, Gollwitzer, Rockstroh and McCulloch (Schweiger Gallo et al., 2009) published another study that was conducted to address the effectiveness of implementation intentions in regulating emotional reactivity.
The study required that disgust (Study 1) and fear (Study 2) eliciting stimuli were viewed by participants subject to three different self-regulation instructions:
- The simple goal intention not to experience fright or disgust ("I will not get frightened")
- The first goal intention, with an additional implementation intention ("And if I see a spider, I will stay calm and relaxed")
- A no-self-regulation control group
Disgust was selected because it is almost universally considered to be a basic emotion in the literature. Fear was selected because anxiety disorders, such as panic disorders or phobias, are common and affect the life of many people. The participants reported on the intensity of the elicited emotions by rating experienced arousal. Only implementation intention participants succeeded in reducing their disgust and fear reactions compared to the other groups.
These results support the idea that self-regulation by simple goal intentions runs into problems when immediate and strong emotional reactivity has to be down-regulated, whereas implementation intentions appear to be an effective tool of self-regulation.
Read more about this topic: Implementation Intention
Famous quotes containing the words intentions, strategic, automation, emotion and/or regulation:
“I have always found that when men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on the intentions of the Creator. But their platitudes have ceased to have any influence with those women who believe they have the same facilities for communication with the Divine mind as men have.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (18151902)
“The strategic adversary is fascism ... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”
—Michel Foucault (19261984)
“Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.”
—Federico García Lorca (18981936)
“But it isnt only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. Its more than that. People know they are in a society dead or dying. They are refusing emotion because at the end of very emotion are property, money, power. They work and despise their work, and so freeze themselves. They love but know that its a half- love or a twisted love, and so they freeze themselves.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“Lots of white people think black people are stupid. They are stupid themselves for thinking so, but regulation will not make them smarter.”
—Stephen Carter (b. 1954)