According to the German Society for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Neurology (DGPP), around 27 percent of all adults in Germany are affected by mental illness every year. That is 17.8 million people. And the trend is rising. One way to protect mental health overall is through targeted control of emotions. The idea behind this is that “if we are able to influence our own feelings, we can ensure that we experience negative emotions less intensely and that they do not last as long,” explains Professor Ulrike Basten. In current research projects, the psychologist is working with colleagues from the ARPID (Affect Regulation – Processes, Interventions, and Development) research initiative to investigate how people deal with their emotions, or, to put it bluntly, how they process positive and negative experiences – “and why some people are better at it than others.”
Ulrike Basten explains that there are many cognitive strategies for emotion regulation, i.e., methods that can be used to influence the perception or classification of experiences: “In our research, we look at two strategies: distraction and reappraisal.” For the experimental study design, this means that study participants are shown images on a screen that evoke negative emotions. These images depict physical injuries, accidents, or scenes of violence. “Images similar to those that everyone is now familiar with from cigarette packs.”
The participants view several images in succession for just under an hour. They are guided by Basten's research team in dealing with the negative emotions thus generated: “With the distraction strategy, for example, they are asked to focus their attention on other, neutral thoughts while looking at the image.” This could be a thought about an everyday activity such as brushing their teeth, “or simply the image of a geometric figure such as a green circle”.
With the reappraisal or “reinterpretation” strategy, participants are instructed to let the image sink in, “but to interpret the image differently, to re-evaluate it,” as positively as possible — or at least less negatively: “If you see a picture of an accident, for example, you can generate a more positive appraisal of the scene by imagining that help is on the way.”
At the same time, the researchers measure the brain activity of the study participants using EEG, or electroencephalography. “We examine how well our test subjects are able to use emotion regulation to reduce the brain activity elicited by the image.” The examination method is non-invasive, adds Ulrike Basten. There is therefore no intervention in the body: “The measurement is not very stressful for people participating in our studies. They are simply given a cloth cap to wear, which contains the electrodes for the measurement.”
“If we are able to influence our own feelings, we can ensure that we experience negative emotions less intensely and that they do not last as long."
Ulrike Basten
Study participants are also asked to rate how good or bad they felt after using the “distraction” strategy and how good or bad they felt after using the “reinterpretation” strategy.
Ulrike Basten and her team are conducting the experiments with a large number of participants – 300 people so far. Analyzing their data, the researchers statistically test “how much the distraction strategy and the reappraisal strategy helped each individual person.” The researchers were able to identify subjective differences that corresponded to the EEG signal. “Ultimately, people choose those strategies more often that help them better– both subjectively and neuronally.” The extent to which such a pattern in the choice of regulation strategies has a positive effect on mental health and thus represents an individual resilience factor is the subject of the team's current research.
Based on her observations and interpretations, Ulrike Basten concludes that “the distraction strategy is super effective overall, but not sustainable.” In other words, negative emotions can be successfully cushioned in this way when a negative situation is experienced once. In the long term, however, i.e., in face of a recurring (and not otherwise controllable) negative situation, reappraisal is likely to be the better strategy.
What do these findings mean for mental health? According to Ulrike Basten, it is not possible to make a blanket recommendation. However, “There is a saying: Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can change. And the wisdom to know the difference.” This sums up the research findings on the appropriateness of certain strategies in different situations very well.
“Reappraisal is a valuable strategy that allows us to reframe situations that we cannot change in such a way that they cause fewer negative feelings.” However, this does not mean that we should generally resort to “thinking everything is fine” and thus endure stressful situations that we could change. For regularly recurring conflict situations in everyday life, such as arguments with a partner or a supervisor, changing the situation by clarifying the conflict can lead to a more lasting improvement. “In everyday life, such decisions are of course much more complex than in our laboratory,” Basten admits. “Short-term and long-term advantages and disadvantages must be weighed up on many dimensions.” These can be difficult decisions that may also be the subject of psychotherapy.
What's next? Ulrike Basten: “In addition to regulating negative emotions, I am particularly interested in the role that deliberately influencing positive emotions plays for our health.” In other words, how can positive thoughts be elicited or reinforced in the interests of mental health? Other planned areas of research include the extent to which personality and life experience play a role in emotion regulation and how childhood experiences have an impact. “We would also like to investigate how children deal with emotions.” This is because many kids today are confronted with a wealth of images on their smartphones. “So far, there has been little research into how they deal with this.”
Du magst gerne das Thema vertiefen? Dann stöbere in den folgenden wissenschaftlichen Artikeln:
Morawetz, C., & Basten, U. (2024). Neural underpinnings of individual differences in emotion regulation: A systematic review. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 162, 105727. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105727
>> VIEW ARTICLE
Rammensee, R. A., Morawetz, C., & Basten, U. (2023). Individual differences in emotion regulation: Personal tendency in strategy selection is related to implementation capacity and well-being. Emotion, 23(8), 2331–2343. DOI: 10.1037/emo0001234
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Armbruster-Genç, D. J. N., Spilger, E., & Basten, U. (2025). Emotion regulation after childhood maltreatment: Suppression tendency and reappraisal capacity. Child Abuse & Neglect, 166, 107511. DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2025.107511
>> READ PAPER
