Procesos cognitivos y regulación emocional: aportes desde una aproximación psicoevolucionista.

Background: Evolutionary psychology posits that there are archaic cognitive processes that our ancestors relied upon for survival. Since these processes are evolutionarily primitive, they are settled in subcortical brain structures and are automatically generated, which leads to difficulties in emotion regulation. Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of automatic vs. deliberate cognitive processing in anxiety regulation. Method: Structural equation modelling was used (n = 386). Results: The plausibility of two processing models was verified (automatic vs. deliberate), finding a direct and intense effect of automatic processing on anxiety (β = 0.36), and an inverse and less intense effect of deliberate processing (β =-0.16). Conclusions: The difficulties in emotion regulation seem to depend more upon the inability to diminish automatic processing rather than on the ability to engage in deliberative processing such as reappraisal. Thus, learning to manage automatic emotional processing may be critical to effective emotion regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]