Psychology Program Presents

Understanding How Our Words Reflect and Affect Our Emotions and Mental Health

Taking a distanced perspective on stressful situations helps us reduce negative emotional reactions and respond more adaptively. But what if our words (i.e., language) could be tools for increasing psychological distance, and consequently facilitate emotion regulation? This talk will present a series of studies on linguistic distancing (i.e., changing one’s words to increase psychological distance by reducing use of first-person singular pronouns like “I” and present tense-verbs) and its relationship with emotion regulation and mental health. Experimental studies (Ns = 107-207) showed that having participants write about aversive images without using the word “I” or present-tense verbs reduced their self-reported negative affect. Conversely, asking participants to engage in emotion regulation (by cognitively reinterpreting or reappraising) aversive images while writing their thoughts revealed spontaneous increases in linguistic distance that correlated with reap-praisal success. Finally, a large naturalistic study of psychotherapy transcripts (N = 6,229) showed that linguistic distancing increased during treatment and tracked within-person reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms. All studies included replications of key findings, strengthening conclusions. Together, this line of research shows that language is a powerful tool for measuring and manipulating both emotion regulation and mental health at large scales.
 

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Preston Theater

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