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Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach

Distraction is an emotion regulation strategy that has an ambiguous status within cognitive-behavior therapy. According to some treatment protocols it is counterproductive, whereas according to other protocols it is seen as a quite useful strategy. The main purpose of the present study was to test t...

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Autores principales: Wolgast, Martin, Lundh, Lars-Gunnar
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer US 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323484/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28286372
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10862-016-9570-x
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author Wolgast, Martin
Lundh, Lars-Gunnar
author_facet Wolgast, Martin
Lundh, Lars-Gunnar
author_sort Wolgast, Martin
collection PubMed
description Distraction is an emotion regulation strategy that has an ambiguous status within cognitive-behavior therapy. According to some treatment protocols it is counterproductive, whereas according to other protocols it is seen as a quite useful strategy. The main purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that distraction is adaptive when combined with active acceptance, but maladaptive when combined with avoidant strategies. A non-clinical community sample of adults (N = 638) and a clinical sample (N = 172) completed measures of emotion regulation and well-being. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups with different profiles on six emotion regulation variables, and these subgroups were then compared on well-being (positive and negative emotionality, and life quality) and on clinical status. A nine-cluster solution was chosen on the basis of explained variance and homogeneity coefficients. Two of these clusters had almost identical scores on distraction, but showed otherwise very different profiles (distraction combined with acceptance vs. distraction combined with avoidance). The distraction-acceptance cluster scored significantly higher than the distraction-avoidance cluster on all measures of well-being; it was also under-represented in the clinical sample, whereas the distraction-avoidance cluster was over-represented. Limitations include a cross-sectional design, and use of self-report measures. The findings suggest that distraction may be either adaptive or maladaptive, depending on whether it is combined with an attitude of acceptance or avoidance.
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spelling pubmed-53234842017-03-09 Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach Wolgast, Martin Lundh, Lars-Gunnar J Psychopathol Behav Assess Article Distraction is an emotion regulation strategy that has an ambiguous status within cognitive-behavior therapy. According to some treatment protocols it is counterproductive, whereas according to other protocols it is seen as a quite useful strategy. The main purpose of the present study was to test the hypothesis that distraction is adaptive when combined with active acceptance, but maladaptive when combined with avoidant strategies. A non-clinical community sample of adults (N = 638) and a clinical sample (N = 172) completed measures of emotion regulation and well-being. Hierarchical cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups with different profiles on six emotion regulation variables, and these subgroups were then compared on well-being (positive and negative emotionality, and life quality) and on clinical status. A nine-cluster solution was chosen on the basis of explained variance and homogeneity coefficients. Two of these clusters had almost identical scores on distraction, but showed otherwise very different profiles (distraction combined with acceptance vs. distraction combined with avoidance). The distraction-acceptance cluster scored significantly higher than the distraction-avoidance cluster on all measures of well-being; it was also under-represented in the clinical sample, whereas the distraction-avoidance cluster was over-represented. Limitations include a cross-sectional design, and use of self-report measures. The findings suggest that distraction may be either adaptive or maladaptive, depending on whether it is combined with an attitude of acceptance or avoidance. Springer US 2016-09-07 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5323484/ /pubmed/28286372 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10862-016-9570-x Text en © The Author(s) 2016 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Article
Wolgast, Martin
Lundh, Lars-Gunnar
Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title_full Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title_fullStr Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title_full_unstemmed Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title_short Is Distraction an Adaptive or Maladaptive Strategy for Emotion Regulation? A Person-Oriented Approach
title_sort is distraction an adaptive or maladaptive strategy for emotion regulation? a person-oriented approach
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5323484/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28286372
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10862-016-9570-x
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