Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol 12(3), Sep 2025, 355-370; doi:10.1037/cns0000371
Acceptance can improve psychological functioning. However, research has yielded inconsistent findings regarding the efficacy of acceptance, which may be related to instructions to accept different aspects of psychological functioning (e.g., thoughts vs. emotion). We compared the effects of self-regulation instructions to accept thoughts, emotions, or a combination of both on measures of affect (i.e., positive affect, negative affect, state anxiety) and emotional dysregulation immediately following emotion-eliciting film clips and following recovery periods after film clips. We also included a no instructions condition to replicate previous findings supporting the salutary effect of acceptance. We tested 100 undergraduates and evaluated a subsample of 50 participants with high trait anxiety (TA). Analyses revealed no significant differences in variables among conditions in the overall sample. However, in the high TA subsample, accepting a combination of both thoughts and emotions was related to greater positive affect compared with no instructions following the neutral film clip and following the recovery period after the fear-inducing film clip. Implications of findings and future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)