• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.475-503
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to clarify the constructs of emotion suppression and help understanding on the multidimensional nature of emotion suppression by classifying constructs for suppression according to the KMW model. Also, this study examined the gender differences of emotion suppression. For this purpose, 657 adult male and female subjects were evaluated for attitude toward emotions, and difficulty in emotional regulation, as well as depression, state anger and daily stress scale. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis on the scales related to the emotion suppression factors, the emotion suppression factors corresponding to each stage of the KMW model were found to be 'distraction against emotional information, 'difficulty in understanding and interpretation of emotions', 'emotion control beliefs', 'vulnerability on emotional expression beliefs'. Next, the study participants were classified by performing a cluster analysis based on each emotion suppression factor. As a result, four clusters were extracted and named 'emotional control belief cluster', 'emotional expression cluster', 'emotional attention failure cluster', and 'general emotional suppression cluster'. As a result of examining the average difference of male depression, depression, state anger, and daily stress for each group, significant differences were found in all dependent variables. As a result of examining whether there is a difference in the frequency of emotional suppression clusters according to gender, the frequency of emotional suppression clusters was high in men, and the ratio of emotional expression clusters was high in women. Finally, it was analyzed whether there was a gender difference in the effect of the emotional suppression cluster on psychosocial adaptation, and the implications were discussed based on the results of this study.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.171-197
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• 2023

The traditional Korean society has been classified as an Eastern collectivist culture, but in the flow of globalization and digitalization along with the post-Cold War era of the 1970s, Western individualistic culture and values quickly permeated the Korean younger generation. Since rapid changes occurred within a short period of time, there may be differences in cultural self-construal between generations living in the same era. Due to this, psychological problems related to emotional expression and suppression may appear differently depending on generations. Therefore, in the current study, 1,000 Korean adult men and women from their 20s to 60s were investigated for their level of independent and interdependent self-construal, alexithymia, ambivalence over emotional expression(AEE) and emotional suppression(ES). Then the relationship between the variables(self-construal and alexithymia,) and the mediating process of AEE and ES were examined. The generation of participants were divided into the industrialization cohort (birth year < 1970) and the digitalization cohort (birth year starting from 1970). Using the PROCESS macro(Hayes, 2022), we tested a serial mediation model of AEE and ES between the relative independent self-construal(RIS) and alexithymia. The results indicate that the level of alexithymia increases by the serial increase of AEE and ES when RIS decreases. Next, we examined a moderation effect of generatione on the mediation process of AEE and ES, and found that generation moderates the relationship between ES and alexithymia. That is, the effect of ES on alexithymia is significant for the digitalization cohort, while it is not significant for the industrialization cohort. The current results imply that emotion regulation strategies of Koreans have been differently developed according to prevailing cultural values in each generation, and that the negative influence of emotion suppression could be different according to the cultural background of each generation.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.101-118
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• 2019

Alexithymia refers to a psychological deficit of identifying and describing one's feelings. It has benn reported that the level of alexithymia of East-Asians is generally higher than that of Western Europeans. Recently one research conducted in U.S. suggested that the interdependent self-construal from East-Asians' collectivism culture might be a cause of this cross-cultural difference. In the current study, we examined the relationship between the level of independent and interdependent self-construal of Korean college students and their level of alexithymia, as well as their ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and emotion suppression. The correlation analysis shows that the Korean students' alexithymia level does not correlate with their level of interdependent self-construal, but negatively correlates with their level of independent self-construal. Moreover, it is also correlated with the level of ambivalence over emotional expressiveness(AEE) and emotion suppression(ES). Thus, we setup a double-mediation model between the deficiency of independent self-construal and alexithymia via AEE and ES, and estimate mediation effects using Hayes and Preacher(2014)s' Process analysis. The results show that the deficiency of independent self-construal has a direct effect as well as indirect effects of AEE and ES on the alexithymia level. Further analysis on the indirect effects reveals that the mediation effect of AEE and the double mediation effect of ES via AEE are significant, but the mediation effect of ES is not significant. Current results imply that the interdependent self-construal from the traditional collectivistic culture may not cause Korean college students' problems on the emotional expression, but the relatively lower independent self-construal may cause them. The deficiency of independent self-constural may raise up the level of self-defensive ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and suppress emotional expression by themselves, which can result in alexithymia.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.469-491
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• 2015

The present study investigated the inhibition mechanisms of gifted children, which is one of the main executive functions in human cognitive system. The inhibition process was subdivided into cognitive and emotion aspects in order to examine the interplay between these two aspects with respect to inhibition processing. In Experiment 1, word-color Stroop task was used to study the cognitive inhibition process of 100 gifted children(Gender: 62 males, 38 females; Academic grade: 46 Elementary school students, 54 Secondary school students). In addition, emotional Stroop task was utilized in Experiment 2 to examine the effect of emotional component during cognitive inhibition process. Results revealed a significant cognitive cost (i.e., word-color Stroop effect) when participants had to withhold automatic response during cognitive inhibition task in Experiment 1. Such cognitive cost was reduced as the chronological age of the participants increased, with no difference in gender. The results in Experiment 2 showed no significant emotional inhibition cost (i.e., emotional Stroop effect) during cognitive inhibition task, and there was no effect of gender nor age. This suggests that the emotional component conveyed in words did not lead to cognitive bias effects. This study proposes that the cognitive and emotional inhibition processes are seemingly independent mechanisms that engage in complex interactions during inhibition processing of behavioral response.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.159-169
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• 2009

After analyzing data of 797 Middle and High School students, the results show that those using cognitive reappraisal strategies adjusted better in school life than those using expressive suppression strategies in regards to application of emotional regulation strategies. In gender differences of the application, male students adjusted better when they used cognitive reappraisal strategies in relationship with their teachers and their peers. Female students, on the other hand, adjusted better in relationship with their teachers their peers, and in academics, when using cognitive reappraisal strategies. In school year differences, middle school students who used less of emotional regulation strategies in academics, friendship and student-teacher relations adjusted better in relationship with their peers.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.89-102
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• 2020

This study aimed to compare the effects of two emotion regulation strategies, namely, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression in female college students. Specifically, the effects of these two emotion regulation strategies were tested and the intrapersonal factors related to the effects of these strategies were explored. The participants included 60 female college students. In Study 1, 40 participants were randomly assigned to each of the two different strategy groups, i.e., a between-subject design was employed. In Study 2, 20 participants were asked to use both strategies to regulate their emotion, i.e., a within-subject design was employed. The results revealed that both emotion regulation strategies effectively reduced negative emotion of emotional stimuli. However, the use of emotion regulation assessed with a questionnaire was not matched to the actual usage of regulation strategies examined with a task. Finally, the use of a suppression strategy was related to the extroversion psychological adaptive variable. Our findings suggest that the subjective assessment of the use of an emotion regulation strategy may not be the same as the actual use of an emotion regulation strategy. Furthermore, we demonstrated that when participants have an option to use both strategies, the cognitive reappraisal is more functional than expression suppression. This concurs with the previous findings on the effects of emotion regulation strategies.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.392-403
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of emotion regulation strategy on posttraumatic growth and to confirm serial multiple mediating effects of self disclosure on a traumatic experience and social support in relationship between suppression strategy of emotional expression and posttraumatic growth. A survey was conducted for adults over the age of 18. Data of 663 adults (222 men, 441 women) were analyzed. According to analysis by using SPSS Process Macro, the less suppression strategy of emotional expression was used, the higher posttraumatic growth was. Simple mediating effect of self disclosure was confirmed between suppression strategy of emotional expression and posttraumatic growth. Serial multiple mediating effects of self disclosure and social support were shown in relationship between suppression strategy of emotional expression and posttraumatic growth. It means that the more people who use less suppression of emotional expression as their emotion regulation strategy, the more they disclose on their traumatic experience, then, they will receive emotional comfort and support from the people around, finally reaching posttraumatic growth. The importance of self disclosure and social support on posttraumatic growth was verified. Counseling intervention method was suggested for involuntary clients who usually suppress emotional expression, to enhance their posttraumatic growth. Lastly, significance and limitations of this study were suggested for follow-up studies.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.68-77
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between behavioral inhibition, ambivalence over emotional expressiveness and social anxiety among Korean middle school students. In addition, we examined whether ambivalence over emotional expressiveness mediated the relationship between behavioral inhibition and social anxiety. For this aim, we conducted a survey of 357 first-third grade students from 6 middle schools located in the cities of Wonju, Seoul, Suwon, Suncheon, and Kwangju. Survey data was analyzed through descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, and Sobel test using the SPSS/WIN 19.0 program. Results were as follows: First, there was a positive correlation between behavioral inhibition and social anxiety on ambivalence over emotional expressiveness. Second, ambivalence over emotional expressiveness was found to partially mediate the relationships between behavioral inhibition and interpersonal anxiety as well as performance anxiety. In other words, while behavioral inhibition tends to affect interpersonal anxiety and performance anxiety in a very direct way, it also influences them indirectly by increasing the ambivalence over emotional expressiveness. These results suggest that counseling of middle school students with social anxiety due to innate behavioral inhibition should seek to reduce their social anxiety by decreasing their ambivalence over emotional expressiveness.

• Korean Journal of Health Psychology
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.483-498
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• 2010

This study is to examine the effects of emotion regulation strategies in facial expressions and emotional experiences, based on the facial expressions of groups, using antecedent- and response- focused regulation. 50 female undergraduate students were instructed to use different emotion regulation strategies during the viewing of a disgust inducing film. While watching, their facial expressions and emotional experiences were measured. As a result, participants showed the highest frequency of action units related to disgust in the EG(expression group), and they reported in the following order of DG(expressive dissonance group), CG(cognitive reappraisal group), and SG(expressive suppression group). Also, the upper region of the face reflected real emotions. In this region, the frequency of action units related to disgust were lower in the CG than in the EG or DG. The results of the PANAS indicated the largest decrease of positive emotions reported in the DG, but an increase of positive emotions reported in the CG. This study suggests that cognitive reappraisal to an event is a more functional emotion regulation strategy compared to other strategies related to facial expression and emotional experience that affect emotion regulation strategies.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.121-132
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• 2016

Emotion is considered to be involved in the moral decision-making process consisting of moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior. This research investigated the distinct role of two specific moral emotions, guilt and shame, when they are suppressed, on moral judgment, moral intention, and moral behavior through an online experiment. Moral emotion (guilt vs. shame) as well as suppression of these emotions (suppressing vs. control) was manipulated to infer the causality of moral emotions and the moral decision-making process when they are suppressed. The results suggest that suppressing guilt was involved in moral judgment and moral intention, but was not involved in moral behavior. In particular, participants who maintained guilt evaluated moral vignettes as more moral and perceived that they would follow the behavior described in the vignettes than those participants who suppressed their guilt. On the other hand, our data showed that suppressing shame was not involved in moral judgment and intention but was in behavior. Participants who maintained shame engaged in moral behavior more than participants who suppressed shame. We delineate the different mechanisms between guilt and shame on the moral decision-making process with the discrete emotion theory.