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Savoring positive emotions: coping with negative affect in the present and from the past

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TitleInfo
Title
Savoring positive emotions: coping with negative affect in the present and from the past
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Speer
NamePart (type = given)
Megan Elizabeth
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Megan Elizabeth Speer
Role
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author
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Delgado
NamePart (type = given)
Mauricio R
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Mauricio R Delgado
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
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chair
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
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Graduate School - Newark
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school
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theses
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2019
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2019-05
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2019
Language
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English
Abstract (type = abstract)
The ability to regulate emotion under stressful circumstances is a crucial component of resilient coping and healthy psychological wellbeing. However, typical strategies aimed at dampening negative emotions (e.g., suppression) are not effective for everyone or in all contexts, suggesting a critical need for alternative forms of coping. One potential alternative is to focus on increasing positive feelings instead. Bolstering positive emotion can broaden one’s scope of cognition and help build psychological resources for coping with future adversity. Thus, the overarching goal of this dissertation was to examine whether positive emotion-focused coping could counter negative affect occurring in the present moment (e.g., experiencing acute stress) and stemming from past adversity (e.g., remembering negative memories). In Experiments 1-2, we found that enhancing positive emotions via positive reminiscence successfully reduced two detrimental consequences of acute stress exposure—stress hormone levels (i.e., cortisol) and negative mood. Using fMRI, positive reminiscence also engaged neural circuitry linked to emotion regulation (DLPFC, VLPFC) and reward-processing (striatum, MFPC), suggesting its emotion regulatory function. In Experiments 3-7, we then tested whether finding positive meaning in past negative events could adaptively update our memories, changing how we feel (emotion elicited by the memory) and what we remember (content of memory) in the future. Positive meaning finding, but not focusing on neutral or negative aspects of a memory, led to the subsequent re-emergence of positive emotion and positive memory content 1-week later (Experiment 3). Critically, we replicated this finding across 4 additional experiments. Adaptive updates were long-lasting, remaining even after 2-months, highlighting the durability and longevity of the effect (Experiment 4). Positive meaning finding only led to updates after a reminder and a 24h, but not 1h delay, consistent with a reconsolidation account (Experiment 5). It was also more effective than receiving a monetary reward after retrieval (Experiment 6). Using multi-session fMRI, positively reinterpreted memories had greater neural pattern dissimilarity at future retrieval in regions associated with memory (hippocampus) and reward (striatum), suggesting a greater change in the neural representation of memory (Experiment 7). Together, this research highlights how savoring positive emotions is adaptive for coping with negative affective states, which has implications for adaptive psychological wellbeing and protection from clinical disorders.
Subject (authority = local)
Topic
Positive emotion
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
Psychology
Subject (authority = LCSH)
Topic
Mood (Psychology)
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Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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ETD_9939
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1 online resource (xiv, 155 pages) : illustrations
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
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Graduate School - Newark Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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rucore10002600001
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Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/t3-9jqy-7388
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights

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The author owns the copyright to this work.
RightsHolder (type = personal)
Name
FamilyName
Speer
GivenName
Megan
MiddleName
Elizabeth
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent
Type
Permission or license
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2019-04-29 23:18:03
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Megan Speer
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Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - Newark
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Author Agreement License
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I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
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2019-05-31
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (qualifier = exact); (point = end)
2020-05-30
Detail
Access to this PDF has been restricted at the author's request. It will be publicly available after May 30th, 2020.
Copyright
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Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
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