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Sensation and emotion are inextricably linked. Interdisciplinary evidence indicates that strategically activating each of the five major sensory modalities (i.e., sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch) can increase positive emotion and decrease negative emotion. Sensation offers a rapid and relatively effortless path to emotion regulation. More research is needed to elucidate how, for whom, and in what contexts sensation can maximally benefit emotional wellbeing. Decades of evidence reveal intimate links between sensation and emotion. Yet, discussion of sensory experiences as tools that promote emotion regulation is largely absent from current theorizing on this topic. Here, we address this gap by integrating evidence from social-personality, clinical, cognitive-neuroscience, and animal research to highlight the role of sensation as a tool that can be harnessed to up- or downregulate emotion. Further, we review evidence implicating sensation as a rapid and relatively effortless emotion regulation modality and highlight future research directions. Notably, we emphasize the need to examine the duration of sensory emotion regulation effects, the moderating role of individual and cultural differences, and how sensory strategies interact with other strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions such as anger, gratitude, envy, and pride can be thought of as tools: They tend to serve context-specific functions in daily life. Prior work has shown that people can use emotions as tools in laboratory contexts, yet it is unclear whether people do use emotions as tools in daily life by intentionally trying to feel or express emotions that could yield context-specific beneficial outcomes. We examined this issue in 6 studies (total N = 1,409) in which participants (a) identified scenarios where specific emotions typically function as tools, (b) recalled episodes of emotional tool use, and (c) reported on emotional tool use in daily life via experience-sampling under experimental instructions. We found that people regularly used emotions as tools in daily life, but that people used positive emotions as tools much more frequently than negative emotions. Yet, when people used positive emotions as tools, this led to less beneficial outcomes than when participants felt positive emotions reactively—in part because using positive emotions as tools felt inauthentic—whereas using negative emotions as tools led to more beneficial outcomes than feeling negative emotions reactively. These findings point to a fascinating paradox: Although people are more willing to use positive (vs. negative) emotions as tools, these choices may not lead people to garner maximal possible benefits of positive emotions, while preventing people from capitalizing on the benefits of using negative emotions as tools. We discuss implications of this work for incorporating emotional tool use into theories of emotion regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within a relatively short time span, social media have transformed the way humans interact, leading many to wonder what, if any, implications this interactive revolution has had for people's emotional lives. Over the past 15 years, an explosion of research has examined this issue, generating countless studies and heated debate. Although early research generated inconclusive findings, several experiments have revealed small negative effects of social media use on well-being. These results mask, however, a deeper set of complexities. Accumulating evidence indicates that social media can enhance or diminish well-being depending on how people use them. Future research is needed to model these complexities using stronger methods to advance knowledge in this domain. Social media has revolutionized how humans interact, providing them with unprecedented opportunities to satisfy their social needs. An explosion of research has examined whether social media impacts well-being. First- and second-generation studies examining this issue yielded inconsistent results. An emerging set of third-generation experiments has begun to reveal small but significant negative effects of overall social media use on well-being. The results of these experiments mask the complexities characterizing the relationship between social media and well-being. Whether it enhances or diminishes well-being depends on how and why people use it, as well as who uses it. People use social media for different reasons (e.g., to manage impressions, to share emotions), which influence how it impacts their own and other people's well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating resonance between people and ideas is a central goal of communication. Historically, attempts to understand the factors that promote resonance have focused on altering the content of a message. Here we identify an additional route to evoking resonance that is embedded in the structure of language: the generic use of the word "you" (e.g., "You can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes"). Using crowd-sourced data from the Amazon Kindle application, we demonstrate that passages that people highlighted--collectively, over a quarter of a million times--were substantially more likely to contain genericyou compared to yoked passages that they did not highlight. We also demonstrate in four experiments (n = 1,900) that ideas expressed with generic-you increased resonance. These findings illustrate how a subtle shift in language establishes a powerful sense of connection between people and ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human neuroimaging offers a powerful way to connect animal and human research on emotion, with profound implications for psychological science. However, the gulf between animal and human studies remains a formidable obstacle: human studies typically focus on the cortex and a few subcortical regions such as the amygdala, whereas deeper structures such as the brainstem periaqueductal gray (PAG) play a key role in animal models. Here, we directly assessed the role of PAG in human affect by interleaving in a single fMRI session two conditions known to elicit strong emotional responses—physical pain and negative image viewing. Negative affect and PAG activity increased in both conditions. We next examined eight independent data sets, half featuring pain stimulation and half negative image viewing. In sum, these data sets comprised 198 additional participants. We found increased activity in PAG in all eight studies. Taken together, these findings suggest PAG is a key component of human affective responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: People tend to ruminate after being provoked, which is like using gasoline to put out a fire—it feeds the flame by keeping aggressive thoughts and angry feelings active. In contrast, reflecting over past provocations from a self-distanced or “fly on the wall” perspective reduces aggressive thoughts and angry feelings. However, it is unclear whether people can self-distance “in the heat of the moment” (i.e., immediately after being provoked), and if they can, whether doing so reduces actual aggressive behavior. Two experiments addressed these issues. The results indicated that provoked participants who self-distanced had fewer aggressive thoughts and angry feelings (Experiment 1) and displayed less aggressive behavior (Experiment 2) than participants who self-immersed or were in a control group. These findings demonstrate that people can self-distance in the heat of the moment, and that doing so reduces aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, and aggressive behavior. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Prior research indicates that psychological distance facilitates emotion regulation. Here, we propose that the ability to transcend one's immersed perspective may be hidden in plain sight, within the very structure of language. We review evidence regarding two linguistic mechanisms, distanced self-talk and generic "you," that promote emotion regulation by allowing speakers to shift from an immersed to a more distanced perspective through the words they use to reflect on the self (e.g., shifting from "I" to their own name or other non-first-person-singular pronouns). We conclude by suggesting that these linguistic shifts occur relatively seamlessly and thus may provide a less effortful route to emotion regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]