Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
This meta-analysis combined 241 effect sizes from 114 studies to test how six habitual emotion-regulation strategies relate to symptoms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and substance-related problems. Rumination showed the strongest (large) link with symptoms. Avoidance, problem solving, and suppression showed medium-to-large links, while reappraisal and acceptance showed smaller (small-to-medium)…
This paper reviews research on procrastination and runs a meta-analysis of 691 correlations. It finds that some personality traits (neuroticism, rebelliousness, sensation seeking) have only weak links to procrastination. Strong and consistent predictors include task aversiveness, task delay, low self-efficacy, impulsiveness, and low conscientiousness (including poor self-control, distractibility, poor organization,…
Putting feelings into words, called affect labeling, can reduce how strong emotions feel. It often does not feel like a deliberate way to control feelings. The review finds that affect labeling shows effects similar to a deliberate strategy called reappraisal across people's experience, bodily responses, brain activity, and behavior. The…
Researchers studied adults aged 36–84 from the MIDUS study and found that people who reported a stronger sense of purpose in life (measured about two years earlier) showed better emotional recovery after seeing negative pictures. Recovery was measured by the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR); smaller eyeblinks after the picture ended…
This small study asked 15 people who had SSRI-related sexual problems to rate their emotions on a questionnaire. Compared with control participants, most of these patients reported weaker emotional responses across many areas, and 80% described clinically meaningful emotional blunting. The reduced emotional scores were statistically significant (p
Researchers asked people with major depression and people without psychiatric disorders to write open, free descriptions of themselves and of other people. Compared with the control group, the depressed group named fewer positive traits and more negative traits for themselves and for parents and close others. A clustering analysis also…
This systematic review looked at 37 studies (2,006 people) that used gold-standard interviews to measure adult attachment and objective tests of emotion regulation. It found a clear link between a person’s attachment representation and how they regulate emotions. People with secure attachment showed balanced emotion regulation. Insecure or unresolved attachment…
This review paper suggests that common anxiety symptoms can be seen as exaggerated versions of normal defensive responses. Those defensive responses change depending on how close a threat is (pre-encounter, post-encounter, circa-strike). The author reviews animal and human research linking specific symptoms—like excessive vigilance, persistent worry, bodily arousal, and avoidance—to…
Anger and aggression have large impact on people's safety and the society at large. In order to provide an intervention to minimise aggressive behaviours, it is important to understand the neural and cognitive aspects of anger and aggression. In this systematic review, we investigate the cognitive and neural aspects of…
Researchers used online surveys to compare three U.S. adult groups—college students (mean age 21), younger adults from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (mean age 31), and older adults recruited through the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (mean age 54). They found that behavioral procrastination (putting off actions) explained more of the differences in…
Researchers surveyed mainly young university students about how hunger feels just before a main meal and then retested many about 1 month later. They found hunger sensations fit 11 different dimensions, that people differ in which sensations they report, and that those reports were stable over time. Although there was…
This 2018 study asked whether adults with ADHD can notice their bodily signals (interoceptive awareness). The researchers compared 24 adults with ADHD to 23 adults without ADHD. They used a heartbeat perception task (an objective test) and a questionnaire (a subjective test). Both groups performed similarly on both measures. The…
