Emotion regulation in depression: Relation to cognitive inhibition

Abstract

Depression is a disorder of impaired emotion regulation. Consequently, examining individual differences in the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies has considerable potential to inform models of this debilitating disorder. The aim of the current study was to identify cognitive processes that may be associated with the use of emotion-regulation strategies and to elucidate their relation to depression. Depression has been found to be associated with difficulties in cognitive control and, more specifically, with difficulties inhibiting the processing of negative material. We used a negative affective priming task to assess the relations among inhibition and individual differences in the habitual use of rumination, reappraisal, and expressive suppression in clinically depressed, formerly depressed, and never-depressed participants. We found that depressed participants exhibited the predicted lack of inhibition when processing negative material. Moreover, within the group of depressed participants, reduced inhibition of negative material was associated with greater rumination. Across the entire sample, reduced inhibition of negative material was related to less use of reappraisal and more use of expressive suppression. Finally, within the formerly depressed group, less use of reappraisal, more use of rumination, and greater expressive suppression were related to higher levels of depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that individual differences in the use of emotion-regulation strategies play an important role in depression, and that deficits in cognitive control are related to the use of maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies in this disorder.

Keywords:

• Depression
• Rumination
• Inhibition
• Emotion regulation

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant MH59259 awarded to IHG.

Notes

¹Given previous criticism of the NAP design (e.g., Frings et al., 2007), in the present study we included several filler trials that were used to control for alternative explanations of the negative priming effect. Specifically, we compared control conditions in which the distractor in the prime trial was neutral to control conditions in which the distractor in the prime trial was of the opposite valence of the target in the prime trial. We compared both control conditions and found that they did not differ significantly from each other. In addition, we obtained negative priming effects and group differences both when examining each of the control conditions separately and when collapsing across the different control conditions. Details regarding these additional analyses are available upon request.

²We correlated our main constructs (inhibition, emotion regulation) with a number of potential third variables that may affect the relation between inhibition and emotion regulation. Specifically, we computed correlations with number of previous depressive episodes in the MDD and RMD groups, as well as with current psychological and pharmacological treatment in these two groups. Finally, we investigated correlations with GAF ratings for all of our participants. Only two significant correlations were obtained. GAF was correlated with reappraisal in the MDD group (r=−.49) and with suppression in the RMD group (r=−.30). Given that we found no significant correlation between reappraisal/suppression and inhibition in either the MDD or the RMD groups, we did not include GAF scores as a control variable in our analyses.