Directed Emotion-Regulation

A project by: Somia Saddique

Successful

WE RAISED £335

from 16 donors

This project received pledges on Mon 10 Jun 2019
A degree of flexibility is needed for successful emotion regulation

A short summary of MY project

I'm raising £320 for an amazing project on emotion regulation in older adults which will give us awesome results on the effectiveness of two emotion regulation strategies. Research shows that emotional disorders result from prolonged emotion dysregulation (inability to regulate emotions effectively).

Who are you?

My name is Somia Saddique, I am a Master’s research student in Cognitive Neuroscience working on this project in collaboration with Dr. Dan Shaw (Principle Investigator) and Nikki Ngombe (Ph.D. student) - Being able to regulate our emotions is really important, as emotions influence how we think and behave. For example, if we think back to a time when we were really furious, we probably didn’t make the best decisions at that time. We might have felt out of control or even said things that hurt those around us. That’s why Directed Emotion Regulation offers a new way of helping people regulate their emotions and can be incredibly beneficial for people’s well-being, relationships and quality of life,” Nicola Ngombe.

MY story

As part of my M.Sc. project, this experiment will be the first to test a technique called 'Directed Emotion-Regulation', whereby individuals are guided by an experimenter to use different emotion regulation strategies to help reduce their negative emotional responses. If this technique is effective, it could be used as a therapeutic intervention for late-life emotional disorders.  

What are you doing and why?

This study is important for a number of reasons. First, research shows that late-life emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression are more prevalent in old age. According to the World Health Organisation, more people aged over 65 take their own lives compared to any other age group. Therefore, the identification of factors increasing the likelihood of late-life depression and anxiety, and the design of effective clinical interventions is of paramount importance for ageing research.

The outcome of this project will help us understand more about emotion regulation and improve existing therapies for emotional difficulties. Using a healthy sample will help us to understand successful regulatory strategies before the development of psychopathologies. Directed Emotion Regulation attempts to train individuals on how to use effective emotion regulation strategies flexibly in different contexts, which could serve as a potential clinical intervention for the ageing population.

Below are some key readings that will allow you to learn more about this study:

 Beraudreau, A. S., & O’Hara, R. (2008). Late-life anxiety and cognitive impairment: A review. American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, 16, 10 

Gross, J. J. (2015). Emotion regulation: current status and future prospects. Psychological Inquiry, 26, 1-26. 

Levy-Gigi, E., & Shamay-Tsoory, S. G. (2017). Help me if you can: Evaluating the effectiveness of interpersonal compared to intrapersonal emotion regulation in reducing distress. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 55, 33-40.     

Sheppes, G., Suri, G., Radu, P., Gross, J. J., Schelbe, S., & Blechert, J. (2014). Emotion regulation choice: a conceptual framework and supporting evidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 146, 1, 163-181    

Where will the money go?

Participants will be awarded for their participation time. Each participant will receive £5.00 for their participation. Any leftover funds will be used to recruit more participants and/or towards costs associated with the experiment (e.g. printing).  

Project updates can be found on the "Updates" link.

Rewards

As a thank you anyone who donates can chose a reward (listed). 

Find us here

For further information regarding this project you can email me on saddiqus@aston.ac.uk.

Help us succeed!

You don't need to give money to help us succeed! Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat over the fence or on your blog.  In fact, share it with everyone you know as we think it's a great idea, and the more people who know about it, the more likely we are to make this work out brilliantly. And we know we said you don't need to give money to help us, but we'd love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help make this happen.