Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Investigating Contextual, Social, and Temporal Dimensions of Emotion Regulation

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Erik Nook at Princeton University, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist examining how naming emotions impacts emotion regulation. Both basic research and clinical theories posit that naming one’s emotions (e.g., “I feel sad”) should help regulate those emotions. However, recent research found the opposite: Naming one’s emotions impeded emotion regulation. Given that this finding runs counter to basic assumptions in the field, the current project aims to clarify when and how emotion naming impacts emotion regulation by testing the durability of this effect when several factors are manipulated. By examining the roles of contextual, social, and temporal features of emotion regulation, this work will provide a strong test of how emotion naming impacts regulation. Findings from this project have deep implications for how we can support people in effectively managing their emotions. The fellow will use both behavioral and psycholinguistic measures to test whether emotion naming impedes emotion regulation: (i) when people regulate emotional responses to autobiographical memories (rather than images); (ii) when people receive regulatory assistance from others (as compared to regulating on their own), and (iii) when the impact of naming on regulation is assessed both immediately and at a 1-week delay. This approach will advance understanding of if, when, and how emotion naming facilitates regulation, and illuminate ways that linguistic representations of emotional experiences track with lasting emotion regulation success. Additionally, this project will allow the fellow to gain new methodological skills (e.g., psycholinguistic tools) and content expertise (e.g., the connection between language and emotion) as they prepare to lead their own lab studying emotion regulation processes. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.