Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119

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Behaviour Research and Therapy

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The effect of emotion regulation strategies on angerq

Paul Lucian Szasz a, *, Aurora Szentagotai b, Stefan G. Hofmann c
a
Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
b
The International Institute for the Advanced Studies of Psychotherapy and Applied Mental Health, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
c
Department of Psychology, Boston University, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study examined the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on the experience and
Received 28 September 2010 expression of anger. Participants consisted of undergraduate students who endorsed at least a moderate
Received in revised form level of state anger. As part of a laboratory experiment, they were instructed to reappraise (n ¼ 24),
17 November 2010
suppress (n ¼ 24), or accept (n ¼ 25) their anger during a frustrating task. Reappraisal was more effective
Accepted 30 November 2010
at reducing anger than attempts to suppress or accept it. Furthermore, participants in the reappraisal
condition persisted significantly longer with the frustrating task than those who were instructed to
Keywords:
suppress or accept their negative feelings. These findings suggest that reappraisal techniques are more
Reappraisal
Acceptance
effective than acceptance and suppression techniques for modulating the experience and expression of
Suppression anger.
Anger Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effects of emotion regulation strategies on anger
Being able to regulate one’s emotions is adaptive and promotes
psychological well-being, especially when dealing with anger and
distress (Mauss, Cook, Cheng, & Gross, 2007). Emotion regulation
consists of processes through which individuals modulate their
emotions in an automatic and effortless and/or conscious and
effortful manner (Bargh & Williams, 2007; Campbell-Sills & Barlow,
2007), and try to influence the occurrence, intensity, duration, and
expression of those emotions to appropriately respond to envi-
ronmental demands (Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007; Gross, 1998).
Effective emotion regulation is associated with good health
outcomes, and improved relationships and academic work perfor-
mance (Brackett & Salovey, 2004; John & Gross, 2004), whereas
difficulties with emotion regulation are associated with greater
distress that may be associated with emotional disorders and other
illnesses (Berenbaum, Raghavan, Le Vernon, & Gomez, 2003;
Greenberg, 2002; Gross & Levenson, 1997; Mennin & Farach,
2007; Mennin, Holoway, Fresco, Moore, & Heimberg, 2007;
Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008).
q Dr. Hofmann is a paid consultant by Schering-Plough and supported by NIMH
grant 1R01MH078308.
* Corresponding author. Babes-Bolyai University, No. 37 Republicii St., Cluj
Napoca, 400015 Cluj, Romania Tel.: þ40 723 333609.
E-mail address: paul@cs.ubbcluj.ro (P.L. Szasz).
The most commonly researched emotion regulation strategies
include suppression and cognitive reappraisal. A direct comparison
between these strategies suggests that reappraisal is more effective
at regulating negative emotions, whereas suppression is associated
with counterproductive effects that lead to experiences of elevated
levels of physiological arousal and negative affective consequences
(Gross, 1998; Hofmann, Heering, Sawyer, & Asnaani, 2009; Richard
& Gross, 2000; Wegner & Gold, 1995; Wegner & Zanakos, 1994).
More recently, investigators have also examined the effects of
acceptance strategies to regulate emotions (Eifert & Heffner, 2003;
Najmi, Riemann, & Wegner, 2009). Whereas some authors view this
approach as being significantly different from conventional CBT,
others have taken a more critical stance (e.g., Hofmann &
Asmundson, 2008). Acceptance is an important feature of Accep-
tance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strohsahl, & Wilson,
1999) and defined as “the active and aware embrace of private
events occasioned by one’s history without unnecessary attempts
to change their frequency or form, especially when doing so cause
psychological harm” (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006,
p. 14).
Studies have shown that acceptance strategies are more effec-
tive than suppression in moderating subjective distress in patients
with panic attacks (Eifert & Heffner, 2003; Levitt, Brown, Orsillo, &
Barlow, 2004). For example, participants who are exposed to 10%
CO2 enriched air report less fear and less catastrophic thoughts
when asked to use acceptance strategies than when instructed to
control their symptoms using diaphragmatic breathing techniques
or no instructions (Eifert & Heffner, 2003).

0005-7967/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.brat.2010.11.011
 P.L. Szasz et al. / Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119
It has further been shown that participants with anxiety and
mood disorders generally judge their negative emotions in
response to a distressing film as less acceptable and tend to
suppress their emotions to a greater extent than nonanxious
participants (Campbell-Sills, Barlow, Brown, & Hofmann, 2006a).
However, when instructed to use acceptance strategies, individuals
with clinical diagnoses of anxiety or depression report less
subjective distress and lower autonomic arousal than when asked
to suppress their emotions in response to a distressing film
(Campbell-Sills, Barlow, Brown, & Hofmann, 2006b).
Similar effects have also been shown in healthy individuals
using a social stress task (Hofmann et al., 2009). In this study,
participants were randomly assigned to reappraise, suppress, or
accept their anticipatory anxiety prior to an impromptu speech. The
instructions to suppress anxiety were associated with greater
increase in physiological arousal than the instructions to reappraise
and accept. Furthermore, the suppression group reported more
subjective anxiety than the reappraisal group. However, the
acceptance and suppression groups did not differ in their subjective
anxiety response. These findings suggest that both reappraising
and accepting anxiety is more effective for moderating the physi-
ological arousal than suppressing anxiety, but reappraising is more
effective for moderating the subjective feeling of anxiety than
attempts to suppress or accept it. This study showed that cognitive
reappraisal of the emotional response to an impromptu speech is
more effective at moderating subjective distress and autonomic
arousal than attempts to accept or suppress the response.
The majority of studies on emotion regulation have examined
the regulation of anxious arousal or emotional distress. In contrast,
relatively few studies have focused on the regulation of anger,
despite its central importance in human interactions (e.g.,
Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; DiGiuseppe & Froh, 2002).
Consistent with the anxiety literature, trait reappraisal moderates
state anger in a situation of anger provocation (Mauss et al., 2007).
In this study, individuals who were low or high in cognitive reap-
praisal were made angry in the laboratory using an experimental
anger induction (Stemmler, 1997). Results indicated that, compared
with low reappraisers, high reappraisers reported less anger, less
negative emotion, and more positive emotion, and exhibited
adaptive physiological responses.
Another study compared the effects of induced anger rumination
and anger reappraisal on anger after recalling an anger-inducing
autobiographical event (Ray, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2008). The results
showed that participants who were instructed to ruminate reported
greater anger, more cognitive perseveration, and greater sympathetic
nervous system activation than participants who reappraised their
anger experience. Similar findings were reported in a study that
examined the effects of cognitive reappraisal and expressive
suppression on self-reported anger and blood pressure during anger
provocation (Memedovic, Grisham, Denson, & Moulds, 2010).
Participants high in trait reappraisal showed attenuated anger and
blood pressure in response to anger provocation.
Recently, it has been suggested that people may choose to increase
their anger when anticipating a confrontation task despite experi-
encing short-term hedonic costs (Tamir, Mitchell, & Gross, 2008). This
experiment has shown that angry participants perform better than
controls in a violent video game by successfully killing more enemies.
This suggests that, depending on the context, functional levels of
anger can help individuals achieve their goals. In contrast to Tamir
et al.’s experiment, however, the present study focused on dysfunc-
tional anger that is elicited by recalling personal situations in which
participants experienced anger toward another person.
Previous studies have found that low frustration tolerance is
associated with state and trait anger (Dryden, 2002; Jones & Trower,
2004; Martin & Dahlen, 2004). Frustration tolerance as a behavioral
115
measure in combination with self-report measures can be used to
gain information about the interaction between frustration-intol-
erant cognitions and distress-intolerant behaviors (Rodman,
Daughters, & Lejuez, 2009). Based on this literature, it can be
assumed that longer persistence on difficult tasks is associated with
higher levels of frustration tolerance, and lower levels of anger.
In sum, the results of these studies suggest that cognitive
reappraisal is a more effective strategy for regulating anger than
suppression and rumination strategies. More recently, proponents
of ACT (Hayes et al., 1999) have argued that acceptance-based
regulation would provide an even more effective alternative for
regulating negative mood states, including anger (Eifert & Heffner,
2003). However, no study has directly compared the effects of
acceptance, cognitive reappraisal, and suppression on anger.
Therefore, the goal of the present study was to investigate the
differential effects of the strategies on state anger at the subjective
and behavioral level. Based on previous studies, we predicted that
suppression is associated with the most anger experience and the
least level of frustration tolerance during a frustrating task. The
traditional cognitive model (e.g., Beck, 1976; Ellis, 1962) predicts
that cognitive reappraisal is associated with the least anger expe-
rience and a high level of frustration tolerance (longer task
persistence). In contrast, the more recent ACT model (Hayes et al.,
2006) predicts that acceptance is associated with the least anger
experience and a high level of frustration tolerance (longer task
persistence).
Method
Participants
Participants included 97 undergraduate students (61.9% female)
from computer science, mathematics, sociology, and psychology
classes at Babes-Bolyai University. They received course credit for
participating in this study. All participants completed the anger
induction procedure. In order to be able to study the effects of the
instruction manipulation on anger, only those participants were
included in the final analysis if they endorsed at least a moderate
level of state anger based on their state anger ratings after a frus-
trating task (n ¼ 73). A moderate level of anger was defined as
a score of 3 on a scale ranging from 1 (not present) to 5 (very much)
points using a composite score that included items (angry, mad,
and irritated) derived from the negative emotion subscale of the
Profile of Affective Distress (PAD). Participants’ age ranged from 19
to 38 (mean age 22.30, SD ¼ 4.27). Informed consent was obtained
from each participant.
Self-report measures
Profile of affective distress (PAD)
This measure was used to assess affective states using a scale of
positive and negative emotions on a 5-point Likert scale ranging
from 1 to 5 (1 ¼ not present, 5 ¼ very much; Opriş & Macavei,
2007). The PAD is a 39-item scale that measures negative and
positive emotions. The scale has high internal consistency (Cron-
bach’s a ¼ .94). Three items from the negative emotions subscale
were used to assess state anger (angry, mad, and irritated).
Affective style questionnaire (ASQ)
The ASQ (Hofmann & Kashdan, 2010) is a 20-item instrument that
measures individual differences in emotion regulation. The ques-
tionnaire consists of three subscales: Concealing (referring to habitual
attempts to conceal or suppress affect), Adjusting (a general ability to
manage, adjust, and work with emotions as needed), and Tolerating
(an accepting and tolerant attitude toward emotion). We
116 P.L. Szasz et al. / Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119
administered the Concealing (for suppression) and Tolerating (for
acceptance) subscales as manipulation checks to verify that partici-
pants followed the suppression and acceptance instructions,
respectively. The scale has good internal consistency (Concealing
a ¼ .84, Adjusting a ¼ .82, Tolerating a ¼ .68).
Attitudes and beliefs scale II (ABS-II)
The ABS-II (DiGiuseppe, Leaf, Exner, & Robin, 1988; Macavei,
2002) is a self-report scale that measures rational and irrational
beliefs uncontaminated by affective items (DiGiuseppe et al.,
1988). The ABS-II is a reliable and valid measure (e.g., David,
Schnur, & Belloiu, 2002; DiGiuseppe et al., 1988). We selected
and administered as a manipulation check a sub-set of seven
items from the rational subscale reflecting rational beliefs of
preferences and frustration tolerance and we used it to assess
whether participants employed the instructed emotion regula-
tion strategy of negative functional reappraisal (internal consis-
tency a ¼ .72).
Computerized mirror-tracing persistence task
We employed the computerized Mirror-Tracing Persistence Task
(MTPT; Rodman et al., 2009) as a behavioral indicator of frustration
tolerance. Based on Quinn, Brandon, and Copeland (1996) and
Strong et al. (2003), we developed a computerized version of the
MTPT in which participants were asked to trace a red dot along
a star on the computer screen using a computer mouse, which was
programmed to move the red dot in the reverse direction. If
a participant moved the red dot outside the star or stalls for more
than two-seconds, a loud buzzer turned on, and the red dot
returned to its starting position. Participants were told that they
could end the task at any time by pressing any key on the computer.
The task ended after 7 min, but participants did not know how long
the task would last. Frustration tolerance was measured as latency
in seconds to task termination. Additionally, the number of errors
per second (i.e., the number of times the participant had to return
to the starting position during the task divided by the task time)
was recorded to control for the effects of skill on persistence. For
the present study, a modified version was used that was translated
into Romanian language by Ca  ta
lina Kopetz and Nicholas T. Calvin
(Center for Addictions, Personality, and Emotion Research,
University of Maryland).
Procedure
Upon arrival to the laboratory, written consent was obtained
from each participant. The entire procedure took approximately
35 min and participants were sitting at a desk in front of
a computer. After signing the consent form, participants were
asked to complete the visual analog scale as a baseline measure.
Next, the anger induction procedure followed. This procedure
included a mental imagery instruction. Extensive empirical data
shows that mental imagery can be effective for inducing
emotions, especially anger (e.g., Holmes & Mathews, 2010;
Pylyshyn, 2006). Participants were told that their ability to
voluntarily induce an emotion would be evaluated. They were
further asked to think of an unresolved situation in the past two
weeks in which they experienced anger toward another person.
Instructions were based on and adapted from previous studies
(Ray et al., 2008). The induction procedure took approximately
7 min for each participant. After the anger induction procedure,
participants were asked to rate their anger experience on
a 5-point Likert scale (1 ¼ not present, 5 ¼ very much) using the
PAD and indicate how much the situation was unresolved for
them in the present using a 5-point Likert scale (1 ¼ resolved,
5 ¼ very unresolved). Next, participants received one of three
instructions in written form. They were instructed to read the
instructions for 4 min. The instructions for the reappraisal group
were derived directly from the “psychological pills” metaphor as
described by David (2006), which was based on Albert Ellis’s
rational-emotive and cognitive-behavior therapy. The acceptance
instructions were an abbreviation of the procedure used by
Campbell-Sills and colleagues (Campbell-Sills et al., 2006a,
2006b) derived from strategies described by Hayes et al. (1999)
and adapted to fit anger. The suppression instructions were
close to the procedure that Gross and colleagues used in previous
studies (Gross, 1998, 2002; Hofmann et al., 2009; Richard & Gross,
2000) for emotional suppression, but they were modified to
include also thought suppression (Wegner & Zanakos, 1994).
Specifically, the instructions were as follows:
Reappraisal instructions: It might happen that in some situations
in which you try to do something and you fail, or things don’t come up
as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some
level of distress and discomfort. Next, please try to tell yourself that it
would be preferable that the others are nice and/or fair to you, but if
they are not, it does not mean that you or they are worthless human
beings. It would be preferable that the others be nice and/or fair to you,
but if they are not, remember that it is only (very) bad, not cata-
strophic (the worst thing that could happen to you). It would be
preferable that the others are nice and/or fair to you, but if they are not,
you can tolerate it, and go on enjoying life, even if it’s more difficult in
the beginning.
Acceptance instructions: It might happen that in some situations
in which you try to do something and you fail, or things don’t come up
as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some
level of distress and discomfort. In some situations you might succeed
to control your negative beliefs or emotions, but it is not always easy to
control emotions as anger. Instead of trying to control your anger
please try to accept and experience your anger fully and not try to
control or change it in any way. Think of acceptance on a continuum,
like some angry beliefs or emotions of anger you could accept more
easily, for some you’ll have to work more, and some could be very
difficult to accept. But, please try to accept, experience your anger fully
as a normal response without trying to control, change it or fight
against it in any way.
Suppression instructions: It might happen that in some situations
in which you try to do something and you fail, or things don’t come up
as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some
level of distress and discomfort. Next, try not to think of the situation
that makes you angry, mad or irritated. Please try as much as you can
not to think about the situation, don’t think about how you feel or
what had happened, and try to suppress your emotions and not feel
them. It’s very important to try as much as you can not to think about
the situations that makes you angry, mad or irritated.
Upon receiving either one of these instructions, participants
were asked to perform the MTPT-C (Rodman et al., 2009; Strong
et al., 2003). At the end, participants completed the PAD to
measure anger and affective distress after performing the task.
They also completed the ASQ subscales (Hofmann & Kashdan, 2010)
and ABS-II sub-set items to confirm that participants employed the
instructed emotion regulation strategy.
Results
Manipulation checks
The ASQ subscales and ABS-II sub-set items scores confirmed
that the participants successfully used the strategy that they were
instructed to use (Table 1).
 P.L. Szasz et al. / Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119 117

Table 1 Table 3
Validation of the experimental manipulation based on the ASQ and ABS-II. Anger scores and persistence.

ASQ subscales and Reappraisal Suppression Acceptance Anger scores Reappraisal Suppression Acceptance
ABS-II items group group group group group group

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Reappraisal 31.08a 2.43 15.37b 4.99 9.20b 2.55 Baseline 1.33 0.56 1.58 0.71 1.40 0.81
Tolerating 12.28b 2.31 17.44b 4.91 16.40a 2.58 Post-anger induction 3.63 0.57 3.79 0.78 3.72 0.79
Concealing 11.50b 2.36 32.66a 4.31 9.25b 2.62 Post intervention 1.96 0.62 3.58 0.77 3.01 0.76
Post-MTPT-C 1.71a 0.62 3.29b 0.75 2.88b 0.88
Note: The Table shows means and standard deviations (SD) for the Affective Style
MTPT-C task duration 356.88a 48.15 268.64b 58.07 298.66b 39.74
Questionnaire (ASQ) subscales (Tolerating, Concealing) and for the Attitudes and
(in seconds)
Beliefs Scale (ABS-II) sub-set items (Reappraisal) of participants in the reappraisal,
suppression and acceptance groups. Different subscripts indicate significant Note: Table contains means and standard deviations of anger composite scores for
differences at p < .05 of the post-hoc ANOVA group comparisons. baselines, post induction, post intervention, and post MTPT-C task and means and
standard deviations for the task duration as an index for persistence. Different
subscripts indicate significant differences at p < .05 of the post-hoc ANOVA group
Randomization comparisons.

Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three

experimental groups (Reappraisal, Acceptance, and Suppression). effect, F (4, 138) ¼ 12.00, p < .01, partial h2 ¼ 0.26, indicating that
The three groups were comparable in their level of positive affect, the reappraisal group showed greater changes than the suppres-
F (2, 70) ¼ 0.19, p > .82, and negative affect, F (2.70) ¼ 1.34, p > .26, sion and the acceptance group. Within contrast analysis showed
on the Profile of Affective Distress for baseline measure (Table 2). a significant linear contrast for general effect of emotion regulation
Furthermore, no difference was observed on unresolved situation, strategies on anger, F (2, 70) ¼ 23.58, p < .001, partial h2 ¼ 0.40.
F (2, 70) ¼ 0.36, p > .69. Furthermore, the three emotion regulation strategies were associ-
ated with a reduction in anger across time (Fig. 1).
Post-hoc analysis (Bonferroni test) of the Group effect showed
Effects of emotion regulation on anger
that participants in the Suppression group reported more anger
than those in the Reappraisal group (mean difference: 1.13,
In order to control for differences in anger at baseline, we
SE ¼ 0.15, p < .001). Furthermore, there was a significant difference
calculated individual change scores for anger (a composite score for
between the Reappraisal group and the Acceptance group (mean
anger, mad, irritated) from PAD and included those differences
difference: 0.77; SE ¼ 0.15, p < 0.001). The difference in anger
scores as the dependent variable in all subsequent analyses. We
scores between the Acceptance and Suppression groups did not
also calculated scores for anger after the anger induction procedure,
reach the level of statistical significance (mean difference: 0.36,
after the manipulation (following the instructions for the three
SE ¼ 0.15, p ¼ .054).
emotion regulation strategies) and after the MTPT-C. Table 3
contains means and standard deviations scores for all these
measures in the three experimental conditions (Reappraisal, Effects of emotion regulation strategies on frustration tolerance
Acceptance, and Suppression).
In order to explore the impact of the three emotion regulation In order to examine the impact of emotion regulation strategies
strategies (Reappraisal, Acceptance, and Suppression) on anger on frustration tolerance (measured as task persistence), we con-
levels as measured with the PAD, we conducted a 4 (Time)  3 ducted an ANOVA with participants’ distress scores in response to
(Conditions/instructions) repeated measures ANOVA with anger as the MTPT-C task as the dependent variable. Results showed
the dependent variable, Time (baseline, post-anger induction, post-
intervention/instructions, and post-MTPT-C task) as a within
subjects variable, and the three emotion regulation strategies as
a between subjects variable (Condition: reappraisal, acceptance,
and suppression). Complete data was available from 24 participants
of the Reappraisal group, 25 participants from the Acceptance
group, and 24 participants from the Suppression group.
The results revealed a significant Time effect for anger, F (2,
69) ¼ 64.73 (Wilks’ Lambda), p < .001, partial h2 ¼ 0.65, a signifi-
cant Group effect, F (2, 70) ¼ 30.10, p < .001, partial h2 ¼ 0.46 with
a large size effect, and a significant Time by Condition interaction

Table 2
Positive and negative affect at baseline.

PAD baseline scores Reappraisal Suppression Acceptance

group group group

Mean SD Mean SD Mean SD

Positive Emotions 9.0 3.28 9.29 2.57 8.72 3.74
Negative Emotions 12.25 6.07 9.41 6.22 12.9 10.47
Unresolved situation 3.92 0.83 3.71 0.85 3.72 1.13

Note: The Table shows means and standard deviations (SD) for the Profile of
Affective Distress subscales of participants in the reappraisal, suppression and Fig. 1. Absolute scores for anger after the anger induction procedure, post interven-
acceptance groups. None of the post-hoc pairwise group comparison were statis- tion, and post MTTP-C task for participants who were instructed to reappraise, accept
tically significant at p < .05. or suppress their anger. The graph depicts means of scores.
118 P.L. Szasz et al. / Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119
a significant effect of the three emotion regulation strategies on
frustration tolerance, F (2, 70) ¼ 20.05, p < .001, partial h2 ¼ 0.36.
The mean duration in the MTPT-C task is shown in the last row of
Table 3.
Post-hoc tests (Bonferroni) showed that participants in the
Reappraisal group persisted significantly longer with the frustrating
task than those in the Suppression group (mean difference: 88.23,
SE ¼ 14.17, p < .001) and the Acceptance group (mean difference:
58.22, SE ¼ 14.03, p < .001). We found no difference in task
persistence for the participants in the Acceptance and Suppression
groups (mean difference: 30.01, SE ¼ 14.03, p ¼ .11). Fig. 2 depicts
the difference in task persistence for the three experimental groups.
Association between anger and persistence
In order to examine the association between state anger and
persistence, we computed correlations between state anger
reported after the MTPT-C and the duration of the task as a measure
of persistence. In order to account for the non-normal distribution
of state anger, we calculated the Spearman’s rank correlation
coefficient (r). As predicted, we observed a significant negative
association between the levels of state anger after finishing the task
and task duration, r (73) ¼ 0.53, p < .01, in the combined group. In
the Reappraisal group, this correlations was r (24) ¼ 0.41, p < .05.
The magnitude of this association was slightly weaker and did not
reach the level of conventional significance in the Acceptance
group, r (25) ¼ 0.38, p ¼ .06. In contrast, the correlation in the
Suppression group was only r (24) ¼ 0.01, p ¼ .70.
Discussion
The present study investigated the effects of different emotion
regulation strategies (reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression) on
experimentally-induced anger at the subjective and behavioral
level, as measured by anger and task persistence. Previous studies
have consistently indicated that suppression is the least effective
emotion regulation strategy because it leads to elevated levels of
physiological arousal and psychological distress (Campbell-Sills &
Barlow, 2007; Gross, 1998). Cognitive reappraisal is based on the
traditional cognitive model, and has been shown to be one of the
most effective emotion regulation strategies (Richard & Gross,
2000). Relatively little research exists on acceptance strategies,
which are based on the more recent ACT model. This popular
Fig. 2. Means and standard errors (Error bars: 2 SE) for task persistence on MTTP-C task for the three experimental groups.
treatment approach predicts that acceptance-based strategies are
the most effective strategies for regulating negative emotions.
Our results suggest that suppression was the least effective and
reappraisal the most effective strategy for regulating anger. These
effects were evident in participants’ subjective ratings and behav-
ioral responses; participants in the reappraisal condition reported
lower levels of state anger and persisted significantly longer with
a frustrating task than those who were instructed to suppress or
accept their negative feelings. These results are in line with
a previous study directly comparing the effects of reappraisal,
acceptance, and suppression for regulating anxiety in response to
a social stress text (Hofmann et al., 2009). Our findings further
suggest that, as predicted, anger was negatively associated with
task persistence. This association was significant in the reappraisal
condition, borderline significant in the acceptance condition, and
not significant in the suppression condition.
The results of this study add to the growing body of literature on
emotion regulation (e.g., Gross, 1998). We suggest that future
studies examine modifications of instructional manipulations to
explore the crucial differences between the various emotion
regulation strategies. Moreover, we suggest that future studies
include psychophysiological measures, especially blood pressure,
heart rate, and cortisol to further examine the effects of different
emotion regulation strategies on anger. In sum, our findings
suggest that reappraisal strategies are more effective than
suppression and acceptance strategies for regulating anger. This
might suggest that individuals with anger control problems benefit
most from reappraisal techniques that allows them to effectively
modulate the experience and expression of anger.
It is important to point out that our experiment is by no means an
adequate comparison of ACT vs. CBT, because we only tested isolated
emotion regulation strategies that are rough and simplified
approximations of therapeutic strategies that occur in the context of
complex interpersonal therapeutic processes (Hofmann et al.,
2009). Nevertheless, we believe that such micro-analyses of thera-
peutic techniques can provide valuable information for the further
development of psychotherapy models. Another limitation is
related to the instructions we used. The suppression instructions
contained elements of thought suppression and emotional
suppression, whereas previous studies focused primarily on
emotional suppression (Gross, 1998). The reappraisal instructions
were adapted from the CBT/REBT model and the “psychological pills
metaphor” to control anger (David, 2006; Ellis, 1962), whereas the
 P.L. Szasz et al. / Behaviour Research and Therapy 49 (2011) 114e119
acceptance instructions were adapted from the ACT model (Hayes
et al., 1999). These instructions were similar to the ones used in
previous studies (e.g., Hofmann et al., 2009). Although there is some
precedence in the literature for these instructions, it is certainly
possible that other instructions might have produced different
results. Moreover, this experiment only examined the short-term
effects of different emotion regulation strategies. A direct link to
contemporary treatment approaches (ACT vs. CBT) in clinical pop-
ulations is difficult to make because these therapies are more con-
cerned with long-term effects of adaptive emotion regulation
strategies. Therefore, these findings do not permit any predictions
about the long-term effects of these emotion regulation strategies
on anger, especially when used habitually or regularly. It is possible
that these chronic effects of anger regulation on mood and overall
functioning are very different from the experimentally-induced
short-term effects. Future studies should examine these long-term
effects in longitudinal and ecologically valid experiments.
Finally, it is important to consider that there may be consider-
able overlap between the strategies that we identified and labeled
as reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression. Without knowing the
precise mechanism through which these strategies work and
without having a psychological model of emotion regulation and
self-regulation that incorporates these strategies, little inference
can be drawn to other contexts, including psychotherapy.
In sum, this study is the first to investigate the impact of reap-
praisal, acceptance, and suppression on anger during a frustrating
task. The results clearly support the use of reappraisal strategies.
Future studies are needed to elucidate the effects of the different
emotion regulation strategies in clinical groups and to examine
individual differences in habitual tendencies to regulate anger. In
addition, more studies are needed to evaluate the impact of
acceptance-based strategies on anger.
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