#emotionregulation — Public Fediverse posts
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DATE: September 10, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Chronic shame may drive destructive thought patterns in abuse survivors
URL: https://www.psypost.org/chronic-shame-may-drive-destructive-thought-patterns-in-abuse-survivors/
Adults who experienced emotional abuse as children often struggle with destructive thought patterns, such as ruminating on failures or avoiding negative feelings. A recent study published in the British Journal of Psychology suggests that chronic feelings of shame may link this early maltreatment to these harmful mental habits. By understanding how shame operates, psychologists may be better equipped to help survivors regulate their emotions in healthier ways.
Childhood emotional abuse involves caregivers engaging in non-physical maltreatment. This can include threatening, terrorizing, or constantly belittling a child. These early experiences of humiliation directly attack a child’s developing sense of self-worth.
Survivors of emotional abuse frequently develop difficulties with emotion regulation in adulthood. They often rely on aversive cognitive perseveration. This psychological term describes a tendency to over-engage with negative thoughts while simultaneously trying to reject or avoid negative feelings.
Aversive cognitive perseveration consists of three main components. The first is brooding rumination, which involves getting stuck on self-reproaching thoughts. The second is experiential avoidance, where a person puts effort into suppressing unwanted internal sensations. The third is emotional non-acceptance, which occurs when a person becomes angry or upset at themselves simply for feeling distressed.
These habits represent a type of response-focused emotion regulation. This means the person attempts to manage an emotion after it has already fully emerged, rather than trying to change their perspective beforehand. This late-stage regulation is often exhausting and counterproductive, leaving the individual trapped in a cycle of distress.
Shame is a powerful emotion that centers on a devalued sense of self. Unlike guilt, which focuses on a specific bad action, shame focuses on the idea that the entire person is flawed. Shame can exist as a chronic trait, meaning a person frequently feels inadequate across many situations. It can also occur as a temporary state in response to a specific humiliating event.
Mohammadali Amini-Tehrani, a psychology researcher at the University of Western Australia, led a team to investigate the mechanisms behind these psychological challenges. The researchers wanted to know if shame serves as the bridge between a history of childhood emotional abuse and the use of cognitive perseveration in adulthood.
The study involved 93 undergraduate students. First, the participants completed a series of questionnaires. They reported any history of childhood maltreatment, including emotional abuse. They also answered questions about their general tendencies to experience chronic shame and their usual reliance on cognitive perseveration in daily life.
Next, the participants engaged in a laboratory experiment designed to induce a temporary feeling of shame. They played a computer game called Cyberball, a well-established psychological tool for studying social exclusion. In the game, participants believed they were tossing a virtual ball back and forth with three other real people. In reality, the other players were computerized avatars programmed to eventually stop passing the ball to the participant.
To heighten the feeling of shame, the researchers modified the standard game. The game ended with a direct message informing the participant that they were being removed from the activity for having the lowest performance in the group. After this rejection, the researchers assessed the participants’ immediate feelings of shame and negative affect. Following a brief distraction task, the researchers measured the participants’ immediate use of cognitive perseveration strategies.
The researchers first analyzed the data to see how chronic tendencies related to behavior in the lab. They found that a history of childhood emotional abuse predicted higher levels of chronic shame. This chronic shame then predicted a greater reliance on cognitive perseveration in general life. It also predicted a higher use of these harmful thought patterns immediately following the laboratory rejection.
The team also tested whether an immediate spike in shame during the game would link past abuse to immediate cognitive perseveration. The results were not statistically significant in the expected direction. Participants with a history of emotional abuse did not report higher immediate shame or higher immediate cognitive perseveration right after being rejected in the game.
Looking closer at the data, the researchers noticed an unexpected pattern. For participants who reported moderate to severe levels of childhood emotional abuse, immediate feelings of shame and cognitive perseveration actually decreased after the rejection. The researchers suggest this might reflect a blunted emotional response. People who have experienced severe early stress sometimes develop an emotional numbness or physiological detachment when faced with new stressful situations.
Regardless of abuse history, the study confirmed a robust link between shame and cognitive perseveration. Whether measured as a chronic trait or an immediate reaction, higher feelings of shame consistently accompanied higher levels of brooding, avoidance, and emotional non-acceptance. The researchers suggest that when people feel a deep sense of shame, they try to fix the perceived flaws in themselves through intense overthinking.
Clinically, these findings highlight the need for targeted therapies. Mental health practitioners might need to help clients distinguish between generalized distress and specific feelings of shame. Because shame inherently encourages avoidance, it can be difficult for people to recognize it in themselves.
The study relied on a sample of 93 students, which limits the statistical power of the analyses. The findings based on this sample size provide tentative suggestions rather than definitive answers. Additionally, the participants were university students who were screened to exclude severe depression. This screening means the results might not automatically apply to clinical populations or the broader community.
The experiment also relied entirely on self-reported feelings collected during a single session. Participants might not always have accurate insight into their own emotional responses. The laboratory task might have also induced other emotions, such as fear or shock, which could have influenced the participants’ thought patterns. Researchers cannot be certain that shame was the sole driver of the observed behaviors.
Future studies could incorporate physiological measures, such as heart rate or skin conductance, to track bodily reactions alongside subjective feelings. Observing these physical markers could help clarify whether survivors of emotional abuse experience a physiological shutdown during stressful events. Researchers could also track participants over a longer period to see how immediate feelings of shame might solidify into long-term negative self-views.
The study, “Shame as a mediator of the association of childhood emotional abuse with aversive cognitive perseveration in adults,” was authored by Mohammadali Amini-Tehrani, Michael Weinborn, Kenneth Sim, Jeneva L. Ohan, and Kristin Naragon-Gainey.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/chronic-shame-may-drive-destructive-thought-patterns-in-abuse-survivors/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #ChronicShame #EmotionalAbuseRecovery #CognitivePerseveration #Rumination #EmotionRegulation #MentalHealthAwareness #ShameVsGuilt #TraumaHealing #PsychologyResearch # survivorSupport
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DATE: August 19, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Emotional intelligence predicts whether envy leads to self-improvement or hostility
A recent study published in Personality and Individual Differences suggests that a person’s ability to regulate their emotions predicts how they experience envy. The findings indicate that higher emotion regulation skills are linked to benign envy, which motivates self-improvement, rather than malicious envy, which breeds hostility. This provides evidence that emotional intelligence may help channel uncomfortable feelings into constructive actions.
Envy is a common emotion that occurs when an individual lacks a desired advantage held by someone else. Christophe Haag, a professor of organizational behavior at emlyon business school in France and author of the book Le Petit Guide illustré de l’intelligence émotionnelle, designed the study to investigate how distinct forms of this emotion operate.
“A major goal of my research is to understand emotions at a fine-grained level, particularly unpleasant emotions and the very different consequences they can have,” Haag said. “I actually try to avoid describing emotions themselves as ‘positive’ or ‘negative,’ as is still often done. I think it is more accurate to describe emotions in terms of their valence—as pleasant or unpleasant—and to reserve ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ for the consequences they may have for ourselves or for others.”
Although often viewed as entirely negative, psychological research separates envy into two distinct types. Benign envy is an unpleasant but motivating feeling that pushes a person toward upward striving and self-improvement. Malicious envy is characterized by hostility and a desire to pull the other person down.
“Envy is a fascinating example,” Haag said. “Like its close cousin jealousy, it is pervasive in our social lives, yet its unpleasantness does not tell us whether its consequences will be constructive or destructive. Envy can motivate us to improve ourselves, but it can also lead us to hostility and to wanting to bring someone else down. I wanted to understand whether emotional intelligence—and particularly the ability to regulate emotions—might help explain these very different motivational trajectories.”
Both states feel uncomfortable, but they lead to very different behavioral outcomes. The reason for this divergence in motivational direction remains an open question in affective science. The way people interpret and manage emotional signals might determine whether they treat an upward social comparison as actionable information or a threat to their self-worth. Emotional intelligence provides a framework to understand this process.
Emotional intelligence encompasses several cognitive abilities related to perceiving, understanding, and managing emotions. Many previous studies on the topic have relied on self-report questionnaires, which measure how individuals perceive their own skills. Self-perceived competence often overlaps with general confidence. To get a more accurate picture, scientists increasingly use ability-based tests, which measure actual performance on emotional reasoning tasks.
Within this ability-based framework, emotion regulation is the specific capacity to select and apply the most effective strategy to achieve a desired emotional state. The current research focuses on this regulatory stage. The capacity to handle emotional responses after they are activated might shift the trajectory of envy. The researcher designed the study to test whether emotion regulation ability predicts a tendency toward constructive self-improvement rather than destructive interpersonal responses.
The researcher surveyed 442 French-speaking adults who were recruited online through social media platforms. The sample consisted of 88.5 percent women. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 72 years, with an average age of about 40.
Participants completed a performance-based assessment of emotion regulation ability rather than a self-report questionnaire. This measure required participants to read four emotionally demanding situations, such as coping with guilt or fostering trust. For each scenario, they had to select the most effective strategy for managing the emotion. Scores on this regulation test were calculated as the proportion of correct answers, ranging from 0 to 1, with the sample scoring an average of 0.539, or roughly 54 percent correct.
Participants also completed a 10-item survey rating their tendencies to experience benign and malicious envy on a scale from 1 to 6. The average score for benign envy was 3.74, suggesting a moderate presence of self-improvement motives. The average score for malicious envy was much lower at 1.66. To isolate the specific role of emotion regulation, the researcher measured and controlled for several other variables known to influence emotional responses.
These control variables included global self-esteem, attachment anxiety, attachment avoidance, age, and gender. Attachment anxiety, for example, involves a heightened fear of rejection, which can amplify defensive reactions in social situations. Incorporating these measures allowed the analysis to account for baseline differences in how people process interpersonal threats.
The statistical analysis indicated that higher emotion regulation ability positively predicted benign envy. A standard deviation increase in emotion regulation ability was associated with a 0.165 standard deviation increase in benign envy scores. In contrast, the association between emotion regulation ability and malicious envy was not statistically significant. A mathematical comparison of the two pathways showed that the relationship with benign envy was stronger than the relationship with malicious envy.
Alongside the main analysis, the researcher also conducted exploratory tests using a broader assessment that measured seven distinct emotional abilities.
“What I found particularly interesting was that emotion-regulation ability was associated specifically with benign envy rather than simply with lower levels of envy,” Haag told PsyPost. “That distinction matters. Emotional intelligence does not appear here as a mechanism that suppresses an unpleasant emotion; rather, it may be associated with the direction that emotion takes.”
Haag noted that emotion regulation was the emotional ability most strongly associated with benign envy among the seven abilities measured.
“This result should be interpreted cautiously, but it is consistent with the idea that regulation may be particularly relevant to what happens after an emotion has been activated,” Haag said.
The control variables also provided context for how envy unfolds. Participants with higher self-esteem reported higher levels of benign envy and lower levels of malicious envy. Attachment anxiety was strongly linked to higher levels of malicious envy. Older participants reported lower levels of both types of envy compared to younger participants.
Even when accounting for these personality and demographic factors, emotion regulation ability maintained its unique association with benign envy.
“The main takeaway is that an unpleasant emotion is not necessarily a ‘negative’ emotion in terms of its consequences,” Haag said. “What matters is not only what we feel, but what that emotion leads us to think and do. In our study, people with greater emotion-regulation ability were more likely to report benign envy—the form of envy that motivates self-improvement—whereas emotion-regulation ability was not significantly associated with malicious envy, which involves hostility and the desire to reduce another person’s advantage.”
The pattern suggests that the cognitive capacity to manage emotions effectively operates independently of a person’s general self-worth or relationship insecurities.
“So emotional intelligence may not make unpleasant emotions disappear—and that is not necessarily what we should want it to do,” Haag said. “Instead, it may help orient their consequences. In the case of envy, the useful question may therefore be less ‘How do I stop feeling this?’ and more ‘What is this emotion going to make me do?'”
The cross-sectional design of the survey means that the data represent a single snapshot in time. “The most important caveat is that this is a cross-sectional study, so we cannot establish causality,” Haag said. “We cannot conclude from these data that greater emotion-regulation ability causes envy to become constructive.”
It is possible that repeatedly engaging in constructive self-improvement over time enhances a person’s regulatory reasoning skills, rather than the other direction. The demographics of the participant pool also present certain constraints. “The sample was also predominantly female, and our performance-based measure of emotion regulation was relatively brief,” Haag said.
Testing more diverse, gender-balanced samples would help clarify whether these emotional pathways operate uniformly across different populations. “Replication with more diverse samples, broader measures, and longitudinal or experimental designs will therefore be important,” Haag said.
“One interpretation I would particularly like to avoid is that emotionally intelligent people experience ‘positive emotions’ rather than ‘negative emotions,'” Haag said. “That is not what our findings suggest. An emotionally intelligent person can experience an intensely unpleasant emotion. The important question is what that emotion subsequently produces—for the person and for others.”
Future experimental research could observe individuals in real time to see how they manage induced episodes of envy. “I would like to continue examining emotions at this finer level, particularly unpleasant emotions such as envy, jealousy, anger, fear, or guilt,” Haag said. “Rather than asking whether these emotions are inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ I am interested in identifying the conditions under which they produce adaptive or maladaptive consequences.”
Such real-time observations could map out how specific mental abilities redirect uncomfortable social comparisons. “One important next step would be to induce envy experimentally and observe, in real time, how people with different levels of emotion-regulation ability respond to it,” Haag said. “More broadly, I want to better understand when emotional intelligence helps transform an unpleasant emotional signal into useful information and constructive action—and when that process fails.”
“I think the broader message extends well beyond envy,” Haag said. “Emotions themselves are not intrinsically positive or negative. They can be pleasant or unpleasant; what can become positive or negative are their consequences for ourselves and for others.”
Envy provides a vivid example of how the same underlying feeling can motivate vastly different behaviors. “Envy illustrates this particularly well,” Haag said. “Faced with someone who has something we desire, the discomfort can push us in two radically different directions: ‘I want to bring that person down’ or ‘I want to raise myself up.'”
“The emotion is unpleasant in both cases,” Haag said. “What changes is where it takes us. Understanding what determines that direction is, to me, one of the most interesting questions in the science of emotions.”
The study, “Emotional intelligence shapes the motivational direction of envy,” was authored by Christophe Haag.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EmotionalIntelligence #Envy #BenignEnvy #MaliciousEnvy #EmotionRegulation #SelfImprovement #ConstructiveBehavior #UpwardMobility #AffectiveScience #PsychologyResearch
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How Our Brain Shapes Thoughts, Emotions, and Mental Health
#BrainScience #MentalHealth #CognitivePsychology #StressAndAnxiety #Neuroscience #MentalHealthAwareness #EmotionRegulation #CognitiveTherapy #MindAndBody #BrainMysteries
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It’s not BPD; it’s autism
https://embrace-autism.com/its-not-bpd-its-autism/
#Borderlinepersonalitydisorder(BPD) #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #Interpersonalrelationships #Emotionaldysregulation #Personalitydisorders #Emotionalreactivity #Sensorysensitivity #Socialintelligence #Emotionregulation #Psychometrictest #Specialinterests #Suicidalideation #Childhoodtrauma #Autisticwomen #Co-occurrence #Meta-analysis #Self-identity #WilliamMandy #Abandonment #Suicidality #Socialcues #LauraHull