Everyday emotion regulation: A mixed-methods investigation into how speech regulates emotion response systems

Beer, Olly May

Abstract

Emotions shape and enrich our conscious experiences. Despite the interdisciplinary consensus that emotions are fundamental to understanding human behaviour, there are limited investigations into emotion and emotion regulation in the daily lives of nonclinical populations. The present thesis applied mixed methods over four studies to help bridge this knowledge gap and aimed to delineate whether, how, and why regulation occurs in daily life, focussing specifically on speech-based behaviours. Study One used semi-structured interviews and focus groups to explore how emotions are understood and regulated using speech in everyday life. Themes identified were emotions outside of speech; speech gives emotion form; and speech as emotion regulation. Speech behaviours identified by participants as providing effective emotion regulation – venting and swearing – were selected for further empirical study. The quantitative phase of the thesis involved two studies investigating whether and how venting and swearing may regulate emotions and was supplemented by a third study which developed and validated a new translation of an emotion measurement scale for the experimental work. In Study Two, venting in response to social ostracism was not found to impact either subjective experiential or physiological emotion response systems when compared to not venting. In Study Four, repeating a swearword was found to increase heart rate variability – a theorised index of parasympathetic nervous system activation and a physiological emotion response system – compared to repeating a neutral word. Swearword repetition did not impact subjective experiential response systems compared to neutral word repetition. The work taken as a whole makes a substantial contribution by documenting how the inclusion of lay voices strengthens and improves emotion research and by evidencing that speech may fulfil adaptive emotion regulatory functions in response to social ostracism.

Citation

Beer, O. M. (2023). Everyday emotion regulation: A mixed-methods investigation into how speech regulates emotion response systems. (Thesis). Keele University

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 19, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 19, 2023
• Award Date: 2023-06