Fight, Flight, or Rethink: Using Cognitive Reappraisal in Response to Anger and Anxiety

Emotion regulation strategies are used as a way of managing one's emotions in response to adverse events. Cognitive Reappraisal is one strategy that has been shown to be a healthy way of controlling emotions, while others have been shown to have negative effects depending on the emotion. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of cognitive reappraisal on the induction of two high arousal emotions: anger and anxiety. Cognitive reappraisal was used in a within-subject experimental design to test how effective it is at mitigating anger and anxiety. We found that cognitive reappraisal led to the participants feeling happier and calmer during the anxiety-induction task. The angerinduction task, when reappraising, led to participants having higher ratings of anger, anxiety, frustration, and nervousness and low ratings of happiness and calmness.

Name thesis:degree_name

Psychology

Level thesis:degree_level

Honors Thesis

Grantor

University of Nevada, Reno

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Robledo, Gwendolyn

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Papa, Anthony
• Boland, Matthew

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11714/6609

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarwolf.unr.edu:11714/6609