Regulations of love: How to feel better when relationships end

Most people will experience a relationship break up. They can be hard to get over. One way to manage this is to try to actively decrease the feelings of love you have for your ex-partner? But does this work? Do people believe they can control their feelings of love in this way? Can you actually do this? 

Join me as I talk with Asst Prof Dr Sandra Langeslag, based at the Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri - St Louis. We talk about how she tested three strategies for regulating love feelings after a break-up and how successful they were, using brain activity and self-report data as her measures.

Here is the link to the full paper we talk about in this week's show:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319412724_Down-Regulation_of_Love_Feelings_After_a_Romantic_Break-Up_Self-Report_and_Electrophysiological_Data

Here is the abstract for some context:

Because remaining love feelings for an ex-partner are negatively associated with recovery from a romantic break-up, it may be helpful to decrease those love feelings. Love regulation is the use of behavioral or cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love. This study evaluated three regulation strategies: (1) negative reappraisal of the ex-partner, (2) reappraisal of love feelings, and (3) distraction. It was tested how these regulation strategies change love feelings for the ex-partner, valence of affect, and motivated attention for the ex-partner. Participants who were upset about a romantic break-up performed these regulation strategies before passively viewing a picture of their ex-partner, during which their electroencephalogram was recorded. Negative reappraisal decreased love feelings and made participants feel more unpleasant. Love reappraisal did not change how in love or pleasant/unpleasant participants felt. Distraction did not change love feelings but made participants feel more pleasant. This suggests that in the context of a romantic break-up, negative reappraisal is an effective love down-regulation strategy, whereas distraction is an effective positive emotion up-regulation strategy. Furthermore, all three strategies decreased motivated attention for the ex-partner, as indicated by a reduced amplitude of the late positive potential. This reduced motivated attention for the ex-partner could make it easier to deal with encounters of (reminders of) the ex-partner. Love regulation is a promising phenomenon with important everyday life and clinical implications.

I hope you enjoyed this fortnight's show. Its good to be back after my break. If you do enjoy this episode, and would like to support the show, you can do that in a few ways:

You can leave a review and rating on iTunes - that really helps others to find the show.

You can follow the show on Twitter @wcwtp or me @sarb

Most people will experience a relationship break up. They can be hard to get over. One way to manage this is to try to actively decrease the feelings of love you have for your ex-partner? But does this work? Do people believe they can control their feelings of love in this way? Can you actually do this?

Join me as I talk with Asst Prof Dr Sandra Langeslag, based at the Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Missouri - St Louis. We talk about how she tested three strategies for regulating love feelings after a break-up and how successful they were, using brain activity and self-report data as her measures.

Here is the link to the full paper we talk about in this week's show:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319412724_Down-Regulation_of_Love_Feelings_After_a_Romantic_Break-Up_Self-Report_and_Electrophysiological_Data

Here is the abstract for some context:

Because remaining love feelings for an ex-partner are negatively associated with recovery from a romantic break-up, it may be helpful to decrease those love feelings. Love regulation is the use of behavioral or cognitive strategies to change the intensity of current feelings of romantic love. This study evaluated three regulation strategies: (1) negative reappraisal of the ex-partner, (2) reappraisal of love feelings, and (3) distraction. It was tested how these regulation strategies change love feelings for the ex-partner, valence of affect, and motivated attention for the ex-partner. Participants who were upset about a romantic break-up performed these regulation strategies before passively viewing a picture of their ex-partner, during which their electroencephalogram was recorded. Negative reappraisal decreased love feelings and made participants feel more unpleasant. Love reappraisal did not change how in love or pleasant/unpleasant participants felt. Distraction did not change love feelings but made participants feel more pleasant. This suggests that in the context of a romantic break-up, negative reappraisal is an effective love down-regulation strategy, whereas distraction is an effective positive emotion up-regulation strategy. Furthermore, all three strategies decreased motivated attention for the ex-partner, as indicated by a reduced amplitude of the late positive potential. This reduced motivated attention for the ex-partner could make it easier to deal with encounters of (reminders of) the ex-partner. Love regulation is a promising phenomenon with important everyday life and clinical implications.

I hope you enjoyed this fortnight's show. Its good to be back after my break. If you do enjoy this episode, and would like to support the show, you can do that in a few ways:

You can leave a review and rating on iTunes - that really helps others to find the show.

You can follow the show on Twitter @wcwtp or me @sarb