Mindfulness And Suppression As Emotion Regulation Strategies For Sadness

The primary purpose of this study was to explore how emotion regulation impacts memory, and how depression might moderate these effects. I recruited 53 participants through Appalachian State’s SONA system. Participants consisted of 13 males and 40 females, all undergraduate students at Appalachian State University, ages 18-25. Each participant completed practice sessions in emotional suppression and mindfulness before viewing a series of photographs intended to elicit happiness or sadness emotions. Participants were instructed to use different emotion regulation strategies (mindfulness, suppression, and natural) while viewing each section of images, and rated how similar they felt, emotionally, to the people in the pictures. Next, participants completed questionnaires measuring depression, emotion regulation, and mindfulness before completing a surprise recall test of the images they viewed previously. Although there was no significant effects of either depression or emotion regulation on memory, depression was associated with other variables. Results showed that individuals with higher levels of depression were more likely to identify with the photographs while suppressing their emotions, and that two facets of mindfulness, nonjudging and acting with awareness, were associated with decreased levels of depression.