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Virginia Tech

Personality and the Two Ways of Regulating Emotion

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The dominant model of personality describes the whole person in terms of dispositional traits. The current study considered a different concept of personality in terms of human functioning in time and space, as a whole system of personality dynamics. The aim of the study was to explore this concept using psychophysiological methods to examine distinctions between personalities during emotion generation and regulation. Specifically, the study examined differences in the number of time lags of autocorrelation of cardiac interbeat intervals (IBI) from baseline to emotion generation and regulation to recovery. It was hypothesized that the number of time lags of autocorrelation of IBIs for each personality would change from baseline to be closer to a value that affect is functioning during emotion generation and regulation and then would return to be closer to the baseline value during recovery. Thirty-three Americans, born and raised in the U.S., were recruited and assigned to one or the other personality group primarily based on their descriptions of a short clip. Using statistics t-test, the findings revealed significant difference in the number of time lags between the two personality groups during the baseline period (p=0.039). The changes in the mean number of time lags in the M group from one period to another were as predicted and did not change significantly. The predicted change in the L group from the baseline period to the sad period was not statistically significant. ANOVA analysis showed an interaction effect that was statistically significant, F(1,21) = 5.322, p=0.031.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Doctor of Philosophy
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Psychology
Department dc:contributor.department
Psychology
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2025

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Seah, Lily
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Scarpa-Friedman, Bruce H.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Lee, Tae-Ho
  • Bell, Martha Ann
  • Panneton, Robin Kay

Subjects

dc:subject × 5

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright
Language dc:language.iso
en

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:44155
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/134284

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Seah, Lily. Personality and the Two Ways of Regulating Emotion. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2025. https://hdl.handle.net/10919/134284