#emotionregulation — Public Fediverse posts
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DATE: August 24, 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: Psychology researchers uncover an unexpected benefit of dance training
Individuals who practice dance may be better at regulating their physical actions when they encounter positive emotional situations. A recent experiment found that dancers were faster at stopping an ongoing movement when shown happy faces, an advantage not seen in people without dance experience. The research was published in the Psychology of Sport & Exercise.
The ability to stop a physical action you have already started is known as response inhibition. This is a core executive function of the brain that people use every day. For example, you use response inhibition when you suddenly stop yourself from stepping into a crosswalk because a car runs a red light.
Psychologists generally divide this ability into two categories. Proactive inhibition involves anticipating that you might need to stop based on your surroundings. Reactive inhibition, which is the focus of this research, involves abruptly canceling a physical movement in reaction to an unexpected external signal.
In daily life, people often have to inhibit their responses while dealing with emotionally charged situations. Emotional information can easily capture human attention. Sometimes this emotional distraction helps the brain process information faster, and other times it disrupts our physical focus.
Dance offers a unique way to study how the brain handles movement and emotion at the same time. Unlike running or weightlifting, dance requires precise musical coordination and active emotional expression. Dancers must constantly adjust their physical movements while conveying feelings and responding to the emotions of their audience or partners.
Researchers wanted to know if this combination of physical and emotional training gives dancers an edge in controlling their actions. Stuti Mehta and Rashmi Gupta of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay designed a study to test whether emotional distractions affect dancers differently than non-dancers.
The researchers recruited 83 young adults for the experiment. This group included 45 dancers and 38 people with no dance experience. The dancers had at least six months of formal training and currently practiced for at least six hours a week.
To ensure that general fitness was not the cause of any observed differences, the researchers only included participants who reported low to moderate levels of regular physical activity. The two groups were matched in terms of their overall physical exercise habits.
Participants completed two computer-based tests designed to measure reactive response inhibition. In the first test, participants watched a screen and pressed a specific keyboard key when they saw the letter X or O. They were instructed to respond as quickly as possible.
Occasionally, a green circle appeared over the letter immediately after it was shown. This green circle was a signal to stop and withhold the key press. The computer constantly adjusted the timing of this circle in 50-millisecond increments to keep the task challenging, measuring exactly how fast the participant could hit their mental brakes.
The second test followed the exact same rules, but it used emotional distractions instead of a simple green circle. When it was time to stop the key press, a photograph of a face from a standardized psychological database appeared over the letter. These faces displayed happy, angry, or neutral expressions.
The emotional faces were entirely irrelevant to the core task of identifying the letters. The researchers used them specifically to see if background emotional information would unconsciously alter the participants’ ability to stop their physical actions.
After finishing the computer tasks, participants filled out several questionnaires. These surveys measured their current moods, their typical levels of stress and depression, and their general sensitivity to rewards and punishments in life.
On the first test featuring the green circle, the dancers and non-dancers performed identically. The researchers observed no statistically significant differences in their ability to stop their responses. Without emotional information present, dance training provided no measurable advantage for physical response inhibition.
Different patterns emerged during the second test featuring the human faces. Dancers were much better at stopping their actions when the stop signal was a happy face. They made fewer errors when viewing happy expressions compared to when they saw angry or neutral expressions.
The participants without dance experience performed the exact same way across all face types. The happy faces did not give them any advantage or disadvantage in stopping their physical responses. The emotional content of the faces simply did not alter their physical control.
The questionnaire results aligned with the performance data. Dancers reported lower levels of stress and depression than the non-dancers. They also reported experiencing positive emotions more often and showed a more regulated sensitivity to rewards.
Within the dancer group, the researchers found that more years of dance experience correlated with better mental health. The longer a participant had been engaged in formal dance training, the lower their reported levels of depression and stress tended to be.
The study authors suggest that dance training might make people more sensitive to positive emotions. Dance is often associated with expressing joy and experiencing a sense of meaningful contentment. This repeated engagement with positive feelings might train the brain to process happy stimuli more efficiently.
According to psychological models of attention, positive emotions tend to broaden our mental focus. Negative emotions, on the other hand, tend to narrow our focus onto specific threats. Because dancers are highly attuned to positive expression, a happy face might require fewer mental resources for them to process, leaving more brain power available to successfully stop their physical movement.
Prior brain imaging research supports this idea. Studies have shown that dance training increases activity in areas of the brain like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. These regions are highly involved in managing emotion regulation and executive functions, which might explain the dancers’ rapid processing of the happy faces.
The study compared two different groups of people at a single point in time. This type of research cannot prove that dance training actually caused the improved response control. It is entirely possible that people who are naturally better at processing positive emotions are simply more likely to pursue dance.
The participants were also mostly young adults, which limits how these findings apply to children or older adults. The dancers practiced a variety of different dance styles. This variety makes it difficult to know if specific types of dance, like ballet or hip-hop, provide different cognitive benefits.
Future research could track individuals over time, testing their cognitive control before and after they enroll in a dance program. Researchers could also use brain imaging technology to see exactly which neural pathways activate when dancers process happy expressions during these tasks.
The study, “Happy faces, faster stops: The cognitive benefits of dance in emotional contexts,” was authored by Stuti Mehta and Rashmi Gupta.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #DanceCognition #EmotionRegulation #ResponseInhibition #HappyFaces #DancersBenefit #ExecutiveFunction #DancePsychology #CognitiveControl #PositiveEmotions #NeuroscienceOfDance
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DATE: August 9, 2026 at 08:00AM
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: How specific masculine ideals are linked to anxiety and depression in men
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-specific-masculine-ideals-are-linked-to-anxiety-and-depression-in-men/
The relationship between traditional masculine ideals and men’s mental health is highly complex, according to new research. While some societal expectations about how men should behave are neutral or even protective, a recent survey reveals that specific norms—namely emotional suppression and extreme self-reliance—are uniquely linked to higher rates of anxiety and depression. The study helps explain the psychological mechanisms behind this, showing that these specific ideals are connected to difficulties in processing and managing emotions. The findings were published in the journal Sex Roles.
Researchers have observed that men are less likely to seek professional psychological help and more likely to drop out of therapy than women. Men also face high rates of internalizing symptoms. Internalizing symptoms refer to mental health conditions where individuals direct psychological distress inward, rather than acting it out aggressively, with common examples including depression and anxiety disorders.
Lead author Vincent O. Mancini, a researcher affiliated with The Kids Research Institute Australia, the University of Western Australia, and Curtin University, along with a team of international psychologists, set out to map the psychological pathways connecting cultural expectations to these internalizing symptoms.
Importantly, the researchers approached masculinity not as a single, homogenous construct, but as a multidimensional set of norms. In many industrialized Western countries, these traditional ideals range from a drive for social status and risk-taking, to stoicism and a reluctance to show vulnerability. The study aimed to identify exactly which of these specific expectations are harmful, which are neutral, and which might even be protective.
To understand the connection between these cultural expectations and mental health, the researchers looked at two specific psychological concepts: alexithymia and emotion regulation.
Alexithymia describes a personality trait characterized by a severe difficulty in identifying and describing one’s own emotions. People with high levels of alexithymia tend to focus their attention outward rather than analyzing their internal feelings. Emotion regulation, on the other hand, is the ability to monitor, evaluate, and modify emotional reactions to achieve a desired state or goal.
The researchers hypothesized that certain cultural expectations teach boys to suppress vulnerability from a very young age. When children are repeatedly encouraged to hide sadness or fear to appear strong, they lose opportunities to practice identifying and processing those feelings. Over time, this lack of practice can develop into alexithymia in adulthood.
To test this framework, the researchers recruited 740 men from the United States and the United Kingdom to complete an extensive online survey. The participants ranged in age from 22 to 80 years old, with diverse educational and employment backgrounds.
The survey included several questionnaires designed to measure different aspects of the participants’ psychological profiles. One questionnaire assessed the degree to which each participant conformed to ten distinct traditional masculine norms. These dimensions included traits like risk-taking, the desire to win, the pursuit of status, self-reliance, prioritizing work above all else, and maintaining strict emotional control.
Additional questionnaires measured the participants’ levels of alexithymia and their ability to regulate their emotions. Finally, the survey evaluated the presence and severity of internalizing symptoms, specifically screening for signs of depression, anxiety, and stress.
The statistical analysis revealed that the relationship between masculine norms and mental health varies heavily depending on the specific type of norm. Four specific masculine ideals were strongly and positively associated with higher levels of alexithymia: the prioritization of work, the drive to remain entirely self-reliant, the desire to win, and the emphasis on emotional control.
Men who reported higher adherence to these norms were more likely to struggle with recognizing and labeling their own feelings. The researchers suggested that burying oneself in work or refusing to ask for help might reinforce a habit of ignoring internal emotional states.
However, other traditional masculine norms did not show this harmful association, and some even appeared beneficial. For example, men who strongly endorsed the “pursuit of status” actually exhibited lower levels of alexithymia and reduced internalizing symptoms. Norms related to risk-taking and heterosexual self-presentation showed no negative association with emotional processing.
For those who did experience high levels of alexithymia, the study found a strong cascading effect. Because these men struggled to accurately appraise what they were feeling, they were less equipped to manage those feelings effectively. This inability to regulate emotional responses was, in turn, strongly associated with elevated anxiety and depression.
By connecting these variables, the researchers mapped a sequential psychological pathway: The pressure to conform to ideals of extreme self-reliance and emotional suppression is linked to an inability to identify personal emotions. This emotional blindness limits the ability to manage psychological distress, which ultimately corresponds to a higher likelihood of experiencing internalizing symptoms.
The data also revealed other associations that operated independently of alexithymia. For instance, the researchers suggested that the “playboy” norm—seeking multiple short-term sexual partners—might be linked to emotion regulation difficulties because it serves as an impulsive, reward-seeking strategy to cope with distress, rather than stemming from an inability to identify emotions.
The authors also noted that emotional control has a highly complicated, dual relationship with mental health. Attempting to restrict or conceal emotions can sometimes provide a successful short-term reduction in distress. However, this immediate protective benefit is ultimately canceled out if it leads to alexithymia over time, which impairs the deeper emotional regulation required for lasting mental health.
Because masculinity is multifaceted, the authors warn against treating it as a single, harmful category, noting that this oversimplification risks perpetuating unhelpful stereotypes about men.
Instead, these findings offer targeted guidance for mental health professionals and educators. The researchers noted that failing to address fundamental difficulties in identifying emotions early in therapy could reduce the effectiveness of traditional psychological treatments. Interventions that first help men build an emotional vocabulary—without pathologizing masculinity as a whole—might prove highly beneficial. Additionally, the authors suggest that school programs focusing on emotion labeling could help boys develop healthier emotional functioning long before they reach adulthood.
While the statistical models map out a sequential pathway, the study relies on cross-sectional survey data. A cross-sectional design captures information at a single point in time, meaning the researchers cannot definitively prove the direction of causality. It is possible that individuals already experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression might report their adherence to masculine norms differently than they would otherwise.
The study also relies entirely on self-reported questionnaires. Future studies could incorporate clinical evaluations or reports from family members to provide a more comprehensive picture. Additionally, research across a wider variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds is needed to see if these psychological patterns hold true outside of Western, industrialized nations like the U.S. and the U.K.
The study, “Internalizing Symptoms in Men: The Role of Masculine Norms, Alexithymia, and Emotion Regulation,” was authored by Vincent O. Mancini, Julia Ditzer, Jack D. Brett, James J. Gross, and David A. Preece.
URL: https://www.psypost.org/how-specific-masculine-ideals-are-linked-to-anxiety-and-depression-in-men/
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #MasculineNorms #MentalHealthInMen #Alexithymia #EmotionRegulation #MenAndDepression #AnxietyInMen #EmotionalSuppression #SelfReliance #MasculinityResearch #SexRolesStudy