Background: Affect labeling is an implicit emotion regulation technique that involves identifying and naming emotions observed or experienced. Previous research has shown that engagement in affect labeling, both when prompted to label one’s own emotions and those of others, is associated with lowered self-reported distress levels and physiological responses, such as heart rate, skin conductance response, and cardiac output (Torre & Lieberman, 2018). The possible mechanisms behind the regulatory effects of affect labeling include distraction, self-reflection, and reduction of uncertainty (Torre & Lieberman, 2018). In one study, adding affect labeling to exposure therapy increased symptom reduction in patients with clinical arachnophobia, compared to reappraisal, distraction, or exposure alone, suggesting that implementation of affect labeling has the potential to improve treatment outcomes for fear-related disorders (Kircanski et al., 2012). However, little research has been done to investigate the baseline affect labeling ability in clinical populations, which could provide key information about whether and how affect labeling modulation could improve treatment outcomes for certain conditions. Moreover, past research has been primarily limited to non-standardized emotional facial expressions recognition tasks, which don’t encompass the complexity of how affect labeling presents in daily interactions (Grynberg et al., 2012). This project aims to address this gap by determining baseline affect labeling ability, as assessed by a comprehensive affect labeling task, across different levels of depression, anxiety, stress, alexithymia, and social phobia.

Methods: Over the summer, I will conduct a background literature review on affect labeling and aforementioned clinical constructs, which will inform our research hypotheses and power analysis, and contribute to the resulting research article as the second author by writing the introduction and methods sections. In this project, we will analyze data from two studies on affect labeling in the general population and in those with public speaking anxiety, with a planned total sample size of 150 participants. In both studies, affect labeling ability is assessed using two measures: (1) The Comprehensive Affect Testing System (CATS-R), a multimodal affect labeling task that involves labeling negative, positive, and neutral emotions in facial, written, and vocal expressions (Froming et al., 2006); and (2) The Affect Labeling Questionnaire (ALQ) which assesses self-reported ability to label one’s own emotions (Sahi et al., 2022). Predictors include the following self-report questionnaires: (1) The Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21) which measures depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms over the past week (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995); (2) The Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) which measures alexithymia, a personality trait characterized by difficulties in identifying, differentiating, and describing feelings (Bagby & Taylor, 1994); (3) The Social Phobia Inventory which measures social anxiety symptoms (Connor et al., 2000); and (4) The Personal Report of Communication Apprehension, Public Speaking Subscale (PRCA-PS) which measures public speaking anxiety (McCroskey et al., 1985). Questionnaires 3 and 4 are currently specific to the public speaking anxiety study. After data collection is complete, correlations between clinical measures and CATS-R and ALQ will be conducted to assess the relationship between affect labeling and depression, anxiety, stress, alexithymia, and social phobia. We will also run a linear mixed effects model accounting for the fact that data is pulled from two studies to ensure potential study effects are taken into account. 

Implications: This project will create a valuable contribution to the field of psychological research and my future academic and career plans. By looking into how affect labeling is related to a variety of psychological concepts, we will add to the understanding of the type of clinical populations that could benefit the most from implementing affect labeling practices into treatment. Moreover, the literature review and writing process will provide me with valuable research experience and serve as the foundation for my future thesis on alexithymia. My previous research has revealed an intriguing interplay between affect labeling, alexithymia, and depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, inspiring me to explore how alexithymia is characterized in narrative writing. As part of my summer research, I intend to design and start recruiting participants for my senior thesis study, which will involve participants with high alexithymia writing autobiographical memory narratives and using natural language processing to perform sentiment analysis. I am excited to continue investigating these topics and learning research practices under the mentorship of Dr. Xandra Kredlow and graduate students Meghan Whalen and Megan Paterson at the Translational Emotion and Memory Lab.

References:

Torre, J. B., & Lieberman, M. D. (2018). Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation. Emotion Review, 10(2), 116–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073917742706

Kircanski, K., Lieberman, M. D., & Craske, M. G. (2012). Feelings into words: contributions of language to exposure therapy. Psychological science, 23(10), 1086–1091. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612443830 

Grynberg, D., Chang, B., Corneille, O., Maurage, P., Vermeulen, N., Berthoz, S., & Luminet, O. (2012). Alexithymia and the processing of emotional facial expressions (EFEs): systematic review, unanswered questions and further perspectives. PloS one, 7(8), e42429. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0042429 

Froming, K. B., Ekman, P., & Levy, M. (2006). Comprehensive Affect Testing System [dataset]. https://doi.org/10.1037/t06823-000 

Sahi, R. S., Guassi Moreira, J. F., Torre, J., & Lieberman, M. (2022). The Affect Labeling Questionnaire (ALQ): Decomposing affect labeling and implications for individual differences in socio-emotional well-being. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/b8hde 

Lovibond, S. H., & Lovibond, P. F. (1995). Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS--21, DASS--42) [Database record]. APA PsycTests. https://doi.org/10.1037/t01004-000  

Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale--I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of psychosomatic research, 38(1), 23–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-3999(94)90005-1 

Connor, K. M., Davidson, J. R. T., Churchill, L. E., Sherwood, A., Weisler, R. H., & Foa, E. (2000). Psychometric properties of the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN): New self-rating scale. British Journal of Psychiatry, 176(4), 379–386. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.176.4.379 

McCroskey, J. C., Beatty, M. J., Kearney, P., & Plax, T. G. (1985). The content validity of the PRCA‐24 as a measure of communication apprehension across communication contexts. Communication Quarterly, 33(3), 165–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463378509369595