There will be a departmental talk next Tuesday on 19 April (4pm) by Ms. Yu Hui, who will be presenting her PhD research. This will be the final talk in this semester’s brown bag series.

More details are appended below. This talk will be held in AS4/0119 (please note the change in venue!). For more information on talks, please visit the departmental blog at https://blog.nus.edu.sg/psychology/.

Title: Individual and Ethnic Differences in Habitual Usage of Reappraisal and Suppression in Relationship with Psychological and Physiological Consequences

Abstract:

The effects of two emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and suppression, on subjective well-being (SWB) and cardiovascular reactivity (CVR), and the potential moderating role of ethnicity on these relationships were investigated. Results showed reappraisal to be an adaptive emotion regulation strategy, linked positively to SWB, and to more adaptive affective and physiological reactivity in response to an anger provocation. This positive relationship holds for both genders and among Chinese and Indians. On the other hand, usage of suppression showed no correlation with SWB or cardiovascular reactivity during anger provocation in our Asian samples. In addition, Chinese and Indians showed differences in their reappraisal and expression of emotions, which reflects socio-cultural influences on cognition and behavior. These results support the usefulness of the process model of emotion regulation in studying different regulatory strategies, but emphasize the need to adopt a socio-cultural perspective.

Speaker’s Profile:

I am interested in emotion and emotion regulation (how people get emotionally aroused and how people cognitively control their emotions) and their relationship with health, especially cardiac health. Particularly I am interested in individual and group differences in their usage of emotion regulation strategies.