Désirée Rehnert
Last Name
Rehnert
First name
Désirée
Phone
+41 78 708 42 42
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
- Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, How the implicit self navigates transitions : a mixed-methods approach to examining emotion regulation in challenging timesCareer transitions are inherently emotional and require individuals to regulate emotions effectively. During the transition from education to work, unregulated negative emotions in particular can be problematic, as they can jeopardize both the achievement of career goals and well-being. However, to date, we know little about how students regulate their emotions during transition and how they can be supported in doing so. While in traditional emotion regulation research, cognitive reappraisal (changing the way we think about a threatening situation) is the main approach to emotion regulation, this work explores how emotions can be regulated in a holistic, intuitive mode of processing. Based on Personality Systems Interaction theory (PSI, Kuhl, 2000), it explores how individuals can activate access to their implicit self as a central feature in such person-centered, intuitive modes of emotion regulation and thereby achieve important regulatory benefits. This work combines a qualitative and a quantitative study in a sequential design. First, it qualitatively examines the experiences of 48 students at the end of their studies who participated in a design thinking intervention to prepare for their transition. By analyzing texts in which students write freely about their experiences, it was found that the strategies students use to regulate emotion vary depending on the positivity ratio of their texts (Positivity Ratio, Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). The results suggest that stronger emotion regulation (characterized by a higher positivity ratio) is associated with the flexible use of different strategies beyond cognitive reappraisal: intuitive action, emotion sharing and empathic exploration of other people's emotions, and noticing which is the nonjudgmental perception of incongruent feelings. The study provides preliminary evidence that design thinking can help expand the emotion regulation repertoire. A subsequent online experiment aims to validate the preliminary finding that empathy-related activities, which are significant in design thinking, lead to better emotion regulation during challenging times. The second study therefore investigates whether empathically exploring another person's emotions can improve access to one's own implicit self (as measured by congruence between implicit and explicit motives). This information can be used to develop interventions aimed at promoting holistic emotion regulation during stressful transitions. Keywords: transitions, emotion regulation, the implicit self, design thinking, empathyType:doctoral thesis