Facing others' misfortune: Personal distress mediates the association between maladaptive emotion regulation and social avoidance.

ABSTRACT: Previous research has linked the use of certain emotion regulation strategies to the vicarious experience of personal distress (PD) and empathic concern (EC). However, it has not yet been tested whether (1) vicarious PD is positively associated with maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, (2) vicarious EC is positively associated with adaptive emotion regulation strategies or whether (3) PD and EC mediate the link between emotion regulation and reports of approach/avoidance in response to a person in distress. To that end, we assessed people's reports of PD (i.e., anxious, troubled and upset) and EC (i.e., concerned, sympathetic and soft-hearted) in response to a video depicting a person in a threatening situation (n = 78). Afterwards, we assessed participants' reports of avoidance and

SUBMITTER: Grynberg D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5862469 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature